Project 1: XBMC running on Raspbian

I have been very busy over the last two weeks. But, during this time, I did find some time to do test runs of the Debian 6 image on my Raspberry Pi.

Almost everything worked out-of-the-box. I needed to manually enable the sound drivers (they are experimental, so disabled by default). As for the Linux drivers which I got in the CD with my USB wi-fi dongle, there was one problem. The drivers were for kernel version 3.1.9. The kernel version of the Debian 6 image is 2.6. I did not perform an internet search, as I already had a LAN cable; so, I thought that I would handle this later, probably by using the Debian Wheezy image for the Raspberry Pi (which comes with kernel version 3.1.9)!

This weekend, I wanted to tackle my first project with my Raspi. I thought that I would setup Debian Wheezy + XBMC on one SD card. This is when I heard about the Raspbian project. So, I setup XBMC on Raspbian using this method. It took about 12 hours to compile XBMC on my raspi, something which others have also confirmed on the forums.

I found a script on the Raspi forums to install the Debian Wheezy drivers for the exact model of my USB wi-fi dongle. Then, I streamed two Game of Thrones Season 2 episodes (1080p) over the LAN. I did not encounter any problems in the video playback. Sound is also very good.

So, all-in-all, a very productive weekend. Project One: Media Center is complete. Now, next weekend, I will be tackling a more difficult project (running basic ROS libraries on the Raspberry Pi)…