Monday, March 28, 2022

Plex on Raspberry Pi deployed

I mentioned before about managing a Plex server for a family member. It went out, and was in need of replacing. It was serious. So, rather than buy or put together a Frankenstreamer, I decided to do a little of both. I decided to use a Raspberry Pi as a Plex streaming server.

Well, I ran into some troubles, and combined another project I was trying with resolving my family member's Plex issues. I decided to try an Nvidia Shield as a Plex server. It went well. At first. Then it began to need to be booted every three days or so.

Along this time, I resolved my KVM switch issues, so I was able to run both Nvidia Shield and Raspberry Pi in parallel. And I resolved the Raspberry Pi issues (actually, an update to Ubuntu fixed it).

When everything settled, the Raspberry Pi turned out to be the way I went. Whatever was causing instability with Nvidia Shield may be worked out, but for now, Raspberry Pi, running Ubuntu, is the Plex server I'm using.

And I'm happy with it. I think she'll be happy with it. She was surprised to see the size of it, but a little excited to have it back. Of course, setting it up was easy. Well, I had to move everything from my house to hers, but I did bring everything except the monitor. I got the official Raspberry Pi keyboard, mouse, power supply, case, fan, everything. I used her existing monitor from the dead Windows machine and didn't set up the Raspberry Pi monitor (yes, there is one of sorts).

No, I didn't use the existing keyboard and mouse, because the Raspberry Pi one stands out, being white and red. I wanted it to be clear what was what. The monitor wasn't an issue, just the keyboard and mouse, so that's how I resolved that. It didn't cost that much more to go that route, and having the entire setup (except the monitor) being Raspberry Pi branded made it look really official. So, it wasn't necessary, but it's how I went.

So, how's it going? Well, I set it up Friday, and it ran fine through the weekend. We'll be keeping an eye on it to ensure it works as expected. But so far, her Streaming Life includes a working Plex server again, and that was the goal.

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