I’m
not what you’d call a hard gamer ... probably I’m not a gamer at
all. So after a little playing with RetroPie,
and the few ROM files I managed to find, I continued with
experimenting with available RetroPie “ports”.
RetroPie
ports
are a plug-in system that usually allow you to add open source games
or additional emulation engine to RetroPie interface. The “KODI”
port instead allow you to install and start from RetroPie interface a
full featured media manager giving your retro-computing machine an
effective “double life”.
KODI
Media Manager
KODI,
previously known as XBMC
is a media manager software available
for various Linux flavours. On the Raspberry it's available both as
installation package and as stand alone distribution. KODI is of
course capable of playing music and video both stored locally on a
remote DLNA source. In addition KODI allows installing a great
variety of add-on
modules to display, for example, YouTube videos or whether news.
Installing
KODI “port”
KODI
can be installed and integrated with RetroPie interface from RetroPie
set-up script.
sudo RetroPie-Setup/retropie_setup.sh
I
selected the “Manage packages” menu, then the “Optional
packages” one at last I selected “KODI” package in packages
list.
Then
the installation script started and I only hat to patiently wait its
conclusion.
First
run and some troubleshooting
As
the installation completed I’ve been able to select KODI from
RetroPie interface “ports” section and to start it. KODI worked
fine and I had no problems to connect with the other Raspberry
MiniDLNA server and play media I keep stored there (I haven’t
attached a local disk yet).
Problems
raised when I tried to install some optional module from KODI
repository, since I continued getting network errors
like the RetroPie machine wasn’t connected the Internet.
After
some search I found this
post suggesting to manually set DNS server instead of letting
RetroPie to fetch it from the DHCP server.
I
so installed dnsmasq ...
sudo apt-get install dnsmasq
And
edited its configuration ...
sudo vim.tiny /etc/dnsmasq.conf
By
adding Google DNS servers IP ...
# Add other name servers here, with domain specs if they are for# non-public domains.#server=/localnet/192.168.0.1server=8.8.8.8server=8.8.4.4
Conclusions
After
setting DNS servers I downloaded and tested some optional module,
like the YouTube or the DailyMotion ones. I must say that while KODI
has been able to play almost all my videos optional modules I tried
revealed particularly slow and almost useless, of course it’s
possible things works much better using a newer and faster Raspberry
instead of my old PI-one.
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