Portable audio/video solution, ipad, rasp pi, etc.

[meester]

We are going to rural Asia for a couple of months next week.

I own the following portable gadgets:

Nokia Lumia 800 (16GB storage of which around 10GB available, no SD slot)
Apple Ipad 4 (16GB storage, with less than 1GB available, wifi only)
Nokia Lumia 920 (32GB storage of which 24GB available - this is my wife's, no SD slot)
Raspberry Pi running RaspBMC using SD card for boot and then accessing home network over wifi

Currently no laptop, as my laptops are all broken. I would like a Surface Pro-type device but it seems like they are still immature tech so not a good time to buy.

I also don't have any external hard drive.

On my home network I have 1TB or so of mp3s and movies.

I would like to bring some of these with me.

Some use cases I am thinking of:

* watch movie on TV at in-laws' house - maybe RaspBMC over HDMI - but I need storage for the movies, external HDD?
* listen to music in guesthouse - I could use my phone for this, but then I need some kind of ipod/dock portable speaker system. Maybe spend around £100 for some speakers?
* watch movie on ipad - but ipad has no storage, could connect over wifi? Or external HDD? Can I use the same hdd as for the ipad?

Other considerations:

power - for watching movie in inlaws' house should be available. For listening to music it might not be convenient to power either phone or speakers. When watching movie on ipad, it would most likely be ok to power an external hdd, but then the connection to ipad would need to be wireless.

internet -will usually be available on my phone, but at very slow speeds, and per MB charging.

public/home wifi - not available at all.


Any thoughts on how to make it work?

I don't really need the external HDD at home, as I have a home server, but it seems potentially cheaper and more sensible than buying a laptop, as as mentioned I don't think I want to buy a new laptop now....

 

[kamikazekyle]

I'm not sure on the Luminas' capabilities for USB On-The-Go, but from my gathering they're pretty locked down like the iPad. Assuming they are, you're a bit up the creek without a paddle. An external hard drive that can be externally powered from the wall is your best bet. Attach it to the Pi. I *think* Plex has a Linux server, so you can run the Plex Media Server there, then install and run the client on your iPad to stream media from the Pi if you have access to WiFi. I'd suggest pre-converting your media into iPad native formats as the Pi isn't really going to be able to live stream, and to be honest, I'm not even 100% sure it could handle native streams.

Another option would be to get a camera connection kit for the iPad. It won't power an external hard drive. You *might* be able to get a powered USB hub, plug the hard drive into that, then the hub into the camera connection kit. Again, kind of a big maybe in that situation. Alternatively, you could use a bunch of SD cards and/or some low powered USB thumb drives.

There's some gotcha's with the connection kit, though:
1: the videos have to be 8 characters long + a 3 character extension and in a folder called DCIM
2: the videos have to be natively compatible with the iPad
3: the SD card/thumb drive/etc. has to be formatted as FAT32 (or maybe FAT).
4: you can't play directly from the SD card/etc. You have to import it into your Photo library, then play from there.

A Nexus or other android tablet that supports USB OTG could be an alternative to the iPad + connection kit. It'll be a bit more flexible in terms of file formats, but you're still limited to SD cards or low powered USB thumb drives if the hub doesn't work.

As for music, it depends on how loud you want to go. For a room a simple standalone speaker that plugs into the headphone jack is inexpensive and either rechargable or can take rechargable AA/AAA's. You can also save money by getting a pair of basic amplified (powered) computer speakers for cheap versus a dock. Generally speaking, a dock would cost more than a set of standalone amplified speakers given the same sound quality and output.

To be honest, I'd vote to buy a netbook with VGA or HDMI out and an inexpensive external HD if the internal drive isn't big enough for your desired media. Leave the Pi at home. Either also leave the iPad or use the netbook to sync movies to/from the iPad easily. This setup will let you do pretty much everything you want to do in every situation without trying to hodgepodge things together that sorta kinda maybe work. You could probably flip the netbook on a private sale for 50% or more of what you paid for it. Or you could just buy a laptop that you intend to use for longer term instead of a netbook; I just mention the option if you want to get maximum flexibility on the cheap.

 

[meester]

Thanks.

I bought the JBL Charge speakers, they are kind of overpriced (£90), but I figured I can probably sell them afterwards for something if I don't want to keep them. So that's fairly simple.

My movies are flv, mkv, mp4 and avi. I am not going to be doing any recoding or anything like that.

The Seagate Wireless Plus looks like it would do the job

http://www.gadgetreview.com/2013/01/seagate-wireless-plus-1tb-mobile-storage-drive-review.html

But it's £155

Whereas I can buy a 750GB USB hard drive for ~£40, and that would be enough storage, it just wouldn't work as smoothly.

 

[poofyhairguy]

There's some gotcha's with the connection kit, though:
1: the videos have to be 8 characters long + a 3 character extension and in a folder called DCIM
2: the videos have to be natively compatible with the iPad
3: the SD card/thumb drive/etc. has to be formatted as FAT32 (or maybe FAT).
4: you can't play directly from the SD card/etc. You have to import it into your Photo library, then play from there.

Or Jailbreak the iPad and none of those gotchas remain.

That is what I would do. My wife uses my external 1.5TB drive with her iPad almost every day. Thanks to XBMC on there it can play almost any file. The HD is externally powered (aka not a mobile drive) so it works fine. And I have it formatted HFS+ so it can hold huge (30+GB) mkv files easily.

 

[meester]

Yeah my ipad is already jailbroken.

You connect the external hard drive to the ipad using the camera connection kit I take it? (Wired.)

I have used XBMC for almost 10 years now, I didn't realise the ipad had its native client though, will take a look.

 

[meester]

Well I just picked up a Seagate Wireless Plus (1TB) for £70 on ebay.

So that's done. Now I just need to figure out if I bring the Raspberry Pi or just get hold of a lightning-to-hdmi adapater. Looks like the adapters cost as much as a Pi though....