Hi there,

I’m thinking about what kind of opportunities there is for a portable media center you can have with you in the car, train or whatever.

I imagine that the media center would create its own WiFi, so that devices would be able to connect to it and access the media.

I know you could do something with a Raspberry Pi, but how could this work in practice? What would be an easy way to access the media from an iPad fx? What software could be used?

As a bonus, it would be pretty cool if the media center could connect to a hotel WiFi and then create a hotspot from that.

Edit: This would be used when on the move. So you would have the media with you on the media center.

  • @[email protected]
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    622 hours ago

    Probably an rpi and a travel router. But seems like the best setup would be a media server you kept at home and a VPN to connect to it from anywhere.

    • @Deckweiss
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      21 hours ago

      Why would you need a travel router?

      The rpi already can be set up to hotspot it’s own wifi network.

      For connecting to hotel wifi, a simple usb dongle is good enough, as discussed here: https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=287485


      In regards to VPN-ing into the media server at home - depending on where you travel, you might not have any internet or you might use up your mobile data volume.

      • @[email protected]
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        21 hours ago

        I used a raspberry pi 3 with RaspAP in this use case in my room at home for some time. Performance was not the best, but enough for my needs back then.

      • MeldrikOP
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        121 hours ago

        Exactly and thank you for the link! 😁

    • MeldrikOP
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      21 hours ago

      I am looking for a solution where you have the media with you, so you don’t need an internet connection to watch your media.

      The media server at home is a great solution that I already use, but if you have 3 people watching in the car, using mobile data, you won’t have anything left when you get to your destination😅

      • @[email protected]
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        212 hours ago

        Pi5 may be a good solution then. Might also try a radxa x4. It has wifi 6 so more bandwidth for multiple wifi clients. Plus an m.2 slot. Only thing that sucks is there’s like no cases for it.