SportyPorty

Has anyone made any Raspberry PI projects for this purpose. I think, if the router VPN doesn't work, that I may look into using one of my PI's. May be a fun project.

uk_grenada

Not sure you could get enough performance, most routers are at least 2 core atoms, and they aren't enough if you support an active household with a decent connection speed.

InVinoVeritas

Yes I am building one at the moment using OpenELEC and I just got the VPN working on it today. A brilliant box and it performs extremely well.

SportyPorty

Really!! Well done InVinoVeritas . Are you able to give us a rundown of how it's built and how you use it. Do you use the NIC to connect to the router and then a WiFi adaptor? Which version of PI did you use. I may have to get a newer model as mine are both the original MK1's.

InVinoVeritas

Hi SportyPorty. Yes I’m happy to share what I have done on RPI 3 but I should just explain to you what I was trying to achieve before you launch off in the same direction.

I have a few places and each of them has a Now TV box connected, in each case, to a router set up to use smart DNS. I also have a well spec’ed W10 mini PC which is the real computer I take on my travels. My problem is that I want to watch UK TV when I am in a camper, at hotels or at friends - normally there is just the TV and a naked wi-fi connection.

Therefore all I really needed was a small, portable streaming device with a built-in VPN which could stream live and playback TV, box sets and movies over a wi-fi connection. The RPI3 fits the bill well as it has good built-in wifi, is fast enough that it doesn’t need overclocking, has enough memory to avoid buffering and can fit in a small casing. It does prefer a 2.5A power supply (so no plugging it into a spare USB port) and, like all RPI’s, it does require a fair degree of technical know-how to set it up since you are starting with little more than a circuit board.

I’ll assume that you are familiar with RPI terminology and modus operandii for Raspberry so I’ll just provide an overview.

Firstly, I wanted to use Kodi (previously XBMC) and this means you will have two choices for the OS - either OpenELEC which is bundled indivisibly with Kodi or OSMC (previously Raspbmc) onto which Kodi can be then be installed.

I chose OpenELEC as I don’t need the extended functionality of OSMC and I am using version 17 which is the latest stable version of OpenELEC and which has many add-ons already included in it.

I hope you are familiar with the way add-ons are installed in Kodi (get more, browse a zip file or side-load via SSH). If not there is a very good Wiki on the fundamentals which I suggest you have a look at some time. I have installed the following add-ons which are sufficient for my needs:-

BBC iPlayer
ITV Hub
FreeView
Exodus
VPN Manager for OpenVPN

There is neither All 4 (previously 4OD), nor Demand 5 add-ons for Kodi, but FreeView streams them as live channels.

BBC iPlayer, you probably already know and it works really well with full HD picture. ITV Hub you will know too; it’s picture is SD only. FreeView has dozens of UK channels, some of which have catch-up (including Dave).

Exodus is a bit different as it will present you with hundreds of films, TV Series and Boxed Sets and it is only when you click on one that it will go off and find the sources. Sometimes there will be a dozen sources for the same programme, and not all of the same quality. As an example you can watch all The Grand Tour episodes now, whereas there is no source available yet for La La Land.

OpenVPN is included in Kodi V17 but it needs a front-end and the VPN Manager for OpenVPN add-on is excellent for this as it supports many different VPN providers. I can only extoll the virtues of SmartDNSProxy.com who I use for the smart DNS of my routers at a cost of $50 for 2 years and who provide both a dynamic smart DNS service (ie you can use it from any IP address) and a VPN service for most countries, all within this fee. Connecting to their VPN was child’s play and it works really well.

Finally I have installed the Mimic skin for Kodi which makes it very easy to customise the look and feel and allows you to get rid of unwanted menu options (such as Pictures and Music).

Now I just need to get a good r/c and I am finished. My Rii Mini i8 works fine for the moment but is a bit bigger than I really want.

Hope all this helps and gets you headed in the right direction. Don’t forget when you’ve set up your RPI 3 to take an image of the MicroSD card in order that you can set up more boxes - your friends and family will want it too - I speak from experience!

SportyPorty

That's great! Thanks for the overview. I am familiar with Kodi and sideloading apps, so that's no problem. The rest sounds straight forward enough, though probably won't be without it's hurdles. This negates the need to run apps from my Roku device/phone/laptop. It's so obvious, but I'd not even considered this, I was so focused on the VPN part. Perhaps this is in some part because my PI's are old and hadn't considered them for media, mind, having said that, I did run one temporarily as a media player some time ago and it worked well. I may look at utilising one for this, and as I already have it, I've nothing to lose. If it crashes and burns, I'll look into an upgrade. Thanks again for the inspiration and details of your project.

EDIT: Oh no, I forgot - No WiFi on early RPI's...darn. Although if I'm using this device, then will i need WiFi...probably not, at least for MKI...

Saxy

Hi Dave, No this definately isn't the only way. Check out Europa Network. I used them for years when living near El Campello. It is a great service!!!

Fred James

Your experience is not always shared by others.

https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.europa-network.com

Saxy

That's life! You can't please all of the people all of the time!!...... I found them very helpful and wouldn't hesitate in using them again. If they weren't any good, they would have gone out of business long ago!

SportyPorty

Hi InVinoVeritas, got the RP3 working with all the apps now, so thanks for you guide, it works really well. The only thing I have been so far unable to configure is the VPN. Thing is, all I want is to be able to create a simple VPN to my server at home. In Windows and other OS's it's a piece of cake - enter the URL (or IP), username and password, job done. But all of the VPN tools I've seen for OpenElec/Kodi are far more complex than that. They are easy to install, if you intend to use one of the pre-configured service VPNs, but even when I choose to use the user configurable setting, it doesn't give me a field to enter the info, I have to configure the .ovpn files etc. It may be easy enough, but it's something I need to look at.

Only have a week to fix it before going to Mallorca!

InVinoVeritas

Sorry, I was just happy to get a VPN to allow me to use iPlayer, so I'm not sure how you do this. I'm now playing around a bit with LibreELEC, which is a fork of OpenELEC, and which may be a quicker route to Kodi 18 (Laila).

SportyPorty

Well, I didn't manage to get the VPN working on the RP3 before I went, so I ended up using an old palmtop pc to connect to my VPN and then plugged in the RP3 to that. It worked a treat, I'm very impressed, especially with Exodus! Bit fiddly for Mrs SportyPorty to use though. Will endeavour to get the RP3 VPN working for the next visit.

InVinoVeritas

I've been travelling with my RPi3 and have had a problem when I have to connect via a public wi-fi sign in procedure. The lack of a browser in OpenELEC and LibreELEC makes this impossible.

I downloaded Kodi 17 to my Android tablet to get around the problem and I'm thinking now that an Android TV box might be a better route in the future.

Kodi 17 is pretty darn good I have to say!

ZGold

IPTV and stuff like that is an* option. you should be able to use a vpn to bypass the region issue

Another way would be to go to their sites to watch stuff, like bbc's official site has an iplayer where you can watch stuff through official bbc site. but it's only valid for uk so once again, ivacy, hss or other vpn/proxy options would be your hack to bypass the region block

yet another solution would be to try out kodi and it's addons for uk. it's a little technical and i still haven't really gotten a hang of it but nonetheless it is an option that you can make work if you can invest some time tinkering

Rosemary

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