Building a Plex Server with Raspberry Pi
By Brian Schell
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About this ebook
If you're anything like me, you've collected a zillion media files over the years. Music, Photos, Movies, even entire series of TV shows. Yes, you can store them on your computer and watch them when you get the chance, but what if you want to watch them from your iPhone or tablet? What if you want to watch them when you aren't home, or even in the same city? What if you just want to hear podcasts or watch web shows?
The Plex Media Server can solve all those problems for you. It serves up music, videos, photos, podcasts, and even more importantly, it's reliable, it looks great, has a bunch of built-in features that makes browsing your huge collection a load of fun. Oh, and the software is completely free,
On the other hand, one of the disadvantages of Plex is that it works best when loaded onto a dedicated computer that is on and available non-stop, all the time, 24/7. One reliable and inexpensive solution to this issue is to run your Plex Media Server from a Raspberry Pi computer, the tiny little computer that'll set you back less than $55 for everything you need.
This book explains how to set up a Raspberry Pi for use as a Plex Server. We'll look at hardware options, downloading and installing the operating system and Plex software, how to configure your hard drives, folders, and files, how to get files into the Pi from other places in the house, and how to access everything, from anywhere. It's all you need to know, and only what you need to know!
Brian Schell
Brian Schell is a College English Instructor who has an extensive background in Buddhism and other world religions. After spending time in Japan, he returned to America where he created the immensely popular website, Daily Buddhism. For the next several years, Schell wrote extensively on applying Buddhism to real-world topics such as War, Drugs, Tattoos, Sex, Relationships, Pet Food and yes, even Horror Movies. Twitter: @BrianSchell Facebook: http://www.Facebook.com/Brian.Schell Web: http://BrianSchell.com
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Book preview
Building a Plex Server with Raspberry Pi - Brian Schell
1
Introducing Plex and the Pi
What is Plex?
Plex is what is known as a media server. You can put movies, music, photos, and other media files on it, and it has all the tools you need to organize, play, watch, and otherwise access that media. Once you have set up a dedicated media server device, you can stream media to your TV, tablets, phones, and other devices, inside your home or even elsewhere through the Internet.
What is a Raspberry Pi?
This product with a silly name is actually a pocket-sized computer. This little box that fits in your pocket is as powerful as any computer you could buy ten years ago. That doesn’t sound particularly impressive, but considering the tiny size and price of the Pi, it really is. Although you can set up a spare full-sized computer as your Plex server, a Raspberry Pi (RPI) is more than good enough, and the whole system, bought new with everything you need, will only run you around $50, so it’s much less expensive than buying a full-sized computer, probably even cheaper than buying most used PCs.
This book will focus on setting up a Raspberry Pi computer, installing and configuring the Plex software on it, and getting your media into the new system.
What’s the catch?
Well, the trick
is that the Raspberry Pi computer runs Linux rather than Windows or MacOS, so it may require some learning to set up and use. That’s the point of this book: to get you from knowing absolutely nothing about Linux or the Raspberry Pi to having a fully-working media server. The only other point of contention is that you must supply the media files, which brings us to our next point…
Is This Legal?
Many people have heard about Plex and jump to the assumption that it's some kind of illegal pirate-streaming-hacker thing. It's not. Plex is a legitimate media server app created by the German company, Plex GmbH. It'll serve up whatever you put into it. Any confusion concerning legality usually revolves around the specific media that is served. Plex Media Server is just software: it doesn’t come with any movies, music, or anything of the sort, legal or otherwise-- You have to provide the files containing the media.
You can legally convert your own DVDs, Blu-Ray movies, photographs, and music CDs for use with the system just fine, and you can also download many thousands of public domain movies from sites like Archive.org for free as well. On the other hand, there are vast numbers of pirate
sites out there that offer everything from the latest Star Wars movie to the latest season of Westworld. There's nothing illegal about using Plex unless you start getting your media illegally, which ought to be obvious. If you want to stay legal, avoid pirate sites. That said, you can use Plex to play any media file, regardless of where it came from.
2
Required Hardware
OK, that all sounds good, so what do we need to buy to make this work? Not so much, really. You can go two ways:
Raspberry Pi 4 system:
Raspberry Pi Model 4 system board ($35-$55 depending on RAM size)
Some kind of enclosure or case made for the model 4 system ($6 and up)
5.1V / 3.0A DC output power supply with micro-USB plug ($8)
Micro SD Card with 16GB capacity or more ($6)
Raspberry Pi 3B+ System:
Raspberry Pi Model 3B+ system board (under $35)
3.5A Power supply with micro-USB plug ($7)
Micro SD Card with 16GB capacity or more ($6)
Some kind of enclosure or case made for the 3B+ system ($6 and up)
And also, for either system:
One or more externally-powered hard drives to hold media files, the bigger, the better.
A PC or Mac computer that can access the SD Card for setup.
Optional extras
HDMI Cable
Ethernet cable
Keyboard
Powered Hub
Pi Notes:
Let’s start with the Pi. The current model of Raspberry Pi, as of this writing, is the Raspberry Pi 4. The 3B+ was the version available immediately before the 4 came out. Either of these are fine for this project, but I would strongly recommend against going with anything older than these two models. The 3B+ board is only available in one RAM size, but the model 4 has options for 1MB, 2MB, or 4MB of RAM. Any of these RAM sizes are fine if you only want to build a Plex Media Server. But if you think you may want to use the device for something else in the future, the larger models don’t add much to the price, so you may want to consider getting a