Adding a XBMC/Kodi tab in EmulationStation

If you have both RetroPie and XBMC/Kodi on your RaspberryPi it would be helpful if you can switch between the two easily. The best thing to do is to add a new tab in EmulationStation so that when you are done playing games you can switch to XBMC to watch a movie!

Update 2/13/15: If you have the newer version of XBMC which is now called Kodi then all the steps are identical; the only thing that would change is the line to load the program. The steps below reflect the new changes showing you both ways to do set this up!

The steps are easier than you think so lets started

pi@raspberry ~ $ cd .emulationstation pi@raspberry ~/.emulationstation $ sudo nano es_systems.cfg

Scroll to the bottom and right before the last line

</systemList>

add the following lines:

<system> <fullname>XBMC</fullname> <name>xbmc</name> <path>~/RetroPie/roms/xbmc</path> <extension>.sh .SH</extension> <command>%ROM%</command> <platform>xbmc</platform> <theme>esconfig</theme> </system>

What this will do is:

• Enable EmulationStation to add a new XBMC tab.
• Have it look in the /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/xbmc directory (That will be made next.).
• Have it only show programs with the .sh file extension.
• Have the tab have the same theme as the esconfig tab (Which isn’t loaded anyway.).

Save and exit with:

Ctrl+x Y Enter

Once that is done I made the ‘xbmc‘ directory and then went into it with:

pi@raspberry ~/.emulationstation $ cd pi@raspberry ~ $ cd RetroPie/roms pi@raspberry ~/RetroPie/roms $ mkdir xbmc pi@raspberry ~/RetroPie/roms $ cd xbmc

I then made a simple bash program that will load xbmc:

pi@raspberry ~/RetroPie/roms/xbmc $ nano xbmc.sh

In this new document I added the following:

#!/bin/bash sudo xbmc -fs

Or if you have XBMC/Kodi use:

#!/bin/bash sudo kodi

Save and exit and them make it executable with:

pi@raspberry ~/RetroPie/roms/xbmc $ chmod +x xbmc.sh

Go back and load EmulationStation

pi@raspberry ~/RetroPie/roms/xbmc $ cd pi@raspberry ~ $ emulationstation

and when you scroll to the left one tab you should see the new XBMC tab with just a white background, open it up and you’ll see the program that was just created, and if you open it then it will load up XBMC!

The theme is very basic and in the future I will work on and change the theme to make it fit in more with the rest of EmulationStation! Look forward to that post too!

 

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Check out the other posts in this series:
Installing XBMC/Kodi on RaspberryPi
Basic XBMC/Kodi Settings
Adding a XBMC/Kodi tab in EmulationStation

Basic XBMC/Kodi Settings

In a previous post I installed XBMC 13.1 Gotham on my RaspberryPi. The only thing I did was check that was installed and loaded correctly and then I exited. (Check out this post to install XBMC.)

To begin I loaded up XBMC from the terminal with:

pi@raspberry ~ $ sudo xbmc -fs

or if you have the newer version Kodi:

pi@raspberry ~ $ sudo kodi

and once it loaded it asked if I wanted to check for updated, I said ‘No’ and then I clicked ‘Yes’ to disable auto check for updates. This can always be toggled back on through the ‘addon settings’ tab. After that I waited for the system to finish updating all the apps that were pre-installed. The only reason I waited was since I was on WiFi it takes a little longer and ends up lagging a little since a lot of the resources were being used.

Once it was all done updating I went over and selected the Settings tab. Once opened on the left side on the bottom there is a Settings Level box, change that to Expert so that it shows all the settings.

Still in the Settings window I went into the System tab and then into Appearance sub-tab. I changed the following:

• Skin:
  • Changed the startup window to the Videos window since that is what I will be using the most.
  • Turned Navigation Sounds off since I felt that was unnecessary.

I hit the Backspace button on the keyboard to back out of the Appearance tab and selected Services. From there I navigated to:

• Webserver:
  • I checked to allow control of XBMC via HTTP.

What this will do is enable you to use an app either on your android or apple device to control everything on XBMC instead of needing a keyboard! After this section I will go over setting them up.

I hit the Backspace button again then selected System sub-tab. From there I navigated to:

• Audio Output:
  • I changed the number of channels to 5.1 since that is what i have set up in my apartment.

From there all the basic settings are set up. These might have to be adjusted to fit your needs but that is all you have to do in order to start enjoying Videos and Audio files on your RaspberryPi.

 

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Check this link for a list of all the keyboard shortcuts for XBMC. I haven’t tested them all but the main ones work good.

 

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To get the full experience of a home entertainment center it would be better to be able to control everything through something other than a keyboard. Luckily there are a few good apps for both Apple and Android devices to enable just that!

Click this link to see the app that I use on my iPod touch as well as iPad Mini. I have the free version.

Click this link to see the app that I have on my Android phone. This is also a free app.

Both of these apps get set up exactly the same way and fairly easy. Since we allowed control of XBMC via HTTP the only requirements are to have the RaspberryPi and the device connected to the same internet.

 

 

All that’s left is to plug in a USB Hard Drive or a Flash Drive and start enjoying all your movies or any videos! There are options to stream media from other computers connected to your network and they seem to have no issues running; since I am on WiFi I decided not to do that. If I end up doing that in the future I will come back and update this post.

Once thing I did notice was that when launching this from the terminal it is better to reboot the system rather than exit the application. For some reason it hangs up and you are left with a blank screen until you ssh into the system and reboot or shut it down. If you load it from EmulationStation, RetroPie or from startx then it will exit correctly.

 

 

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Check out the other posts in this series:
Installing XBMC/Kodi on RaspberryPi
Basic XBMC/Kodi Settings
Adding a XBMC/Kodi tab in EmulationStation

Installing XBMC/Kodi on RaspberryPi

XBMC (Xbox Media Center) is a great media center for anyone’s home entertainment center. It allows you to pull videos from your other computers, servers as well as being able to plug a flash drive and play from there! XBMC is available for just about all operating systems and the RaspberryPi is no different.

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There are many different Operating Systems that comes pre-installed with XBMC. This is good if all you will be using your RaspberryPi for is a media center. Since I am building my current image as a complete server, gaming, media package I want to install it on top of the image I am already building. Back in 2012 I found a blog entry (found here) that seemed to be the easiest way possible to install XBMC with just a few steps!

Start by going into the sources.list.d directory with

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ cd /etc/apt/sources.list.d

If this directory doesn’t exist then simply create it with:

pi@raspberrypi /etc/apt/sources.list.d $ sudo mkdir /etc/apt/sources.list.d

Once in edit or create a file called mene.list with:

pi@raspberrypi /etc/apt/sources.list.d $ sudo nano mene.list

In that document add the following line:

deb http://archive.mene.za.net/raspbian wheezy contrib

Save and exit the document.

Ctrl+x Y Enter

You now have to imports the signaling key with:

pi@raspberrypi /etc/apt/sources.list.d $ cd pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo apt-key adv –keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com –recv-key 5243CDED

(Note: there are two dashes in front of keyserver and recv-key, in some browsers they seem to merge together!!)

and update all the packages on the RaspberryPi with:

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo apt-get update

With this you can now install XBMC like any other package with:

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo apt-get install xbmc -y

Once done you are all set! I rebooted my Pi with

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo reboot

and when it loaded I was able to get into XBMC from the terminal with

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo xbmc -fs

I run it with sudo because some of the directories I store media in has root privileges and so I don’t have to worry about adding other users to some groups. I run it with -fs because since the 13.0 Gotham update when I loaded it without -fs I would only get a small window for the GUI but the videos would still play correctly.

Update: with the new XBMC versions the above command no longer works. Using the following command will load XBMC:

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo kodi

 

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Check out the other posts in this series:
Installing XBMC/Kodi on RaspberryPi
Basic XBMC/Kodi Settings
Adding a XBMC/Kodi tab in EmulationStation