Kodi and a Raspberry Pi makes for one of the easiest and best media centers you can make yourself.
Kodi is a great way to make your TV smart. It’s the continuation of XBMC, a free and open-source application that is a great media player and complete replacement for just about any other media-centric software. It’s not a streaming server or DVR. It’s the software you use to watch video content and listen to music through any screen with an HDMI connection.
Because it’s open-source, Kodi runs on just about every platform known to man — Windows, Android, iOS, macOS and a gazillion different flavors of BSD and Linux.
Several of those operating system platforms also work really well on the Raspberry Pi. A marriage of the two makes for a cheap media center that’s easy to set up and has all the features you’ll find on expensive alternatives. It’s a DIY project that anyone can do and the results are incredible.
Getting started
You’ll need to buy a few things:
Raspberry Pi 3
A case of some sort
A power supply
A microSD card with an adapter to plug it into your computer
You can run Kodi on an earlier model of Raspberry Pi (and plenty of folks do) but the better hardware in the third revision makes a big difference. The power supply needs to provide 5 volts at 2 amps through a Micro-USB port. Any microSD card will work, but faster cards are better — try to get something Class 10 or higher. You’ll also want one at least 8GB in size.
The case needs to have decent airflow because things can get hot. It should also stay together if the cat or a roaming infant gets behind things and pulls on cords. And you’ll need a cable that can take HDMI with audio from the Raspberry Pi to the screen you want to see your stuff on.
The easy way is to buy a kit that has all this stuff in it. You’ll save a couple dollars and a lot of time. I went with this kit from CanaKit and it has everything you need to get started and it’s decent quality stuff.
See CanaKit at Amazon
You’ll also want to have a keyboard and mouse you can use directly with your Kodi box. Almost any keyboard and mouse will work, but after trying a whole bunch of them through the years on various small electronic projects I have to recommend the Logitech K400. It’s bigger than many others, but it works on everything without any setup or hassle — even the PlayStation 4 which can be finicky and hates peripherals.
I have like three of them around the office and they’ve held up just fine.
See Logitech K400 keyboard at Amazon
Putting things together
Gather up your handful of parts and find a nice flat spot
How to install Kodi on a Raspberry Pi
