I have Roku Ultras (2) that we take with us when when we travel. I have a laptop with PMS and my 300GB of movies and tv that we take with us when we go on vacation or travel. When we are in the hotel I hook my Roku’s up and I have a TripMate TM06 that I connect the laptop and Roku’s to to make sure they are all on the same network. Connecting the Roku’s to my home server works fine but I don’t have unlimited bandwidth at home and the hotel is sometimes pretty spotty so I would like to connect them to my laptop PMS. When I try to do that I get that the server is currently unavailable but it’s running just fine and I can connect via the 127.0.01/web link just fine. I do notice that “Remote Access” is unavailable but I’m not looking to connect remotely as I should be able to direct connect and just serve them locally but even when I do connect to the laptop PMS the playback pauses every few seconds and has to reload.
I have PlexPass but I don’t have tablets or anything to cast to a screen and we like the Plex UI to watch while we are in the hotel. Is there anyway to do this or another travel router that will work better than this old one I have? I don’t understand why if they are all on the same network that it won’t just connect directly. Also I have tried disabling Secured Connections as well as added the IP addresses for the Rokus but nothing helped.
you need to make sure devices can ‘ping’ each other, if they can’t then the router probably has wifi isolation (or something to that effect) turned on.
this blocks wifi devices from seeing each other (for security), but obviously it will block plex and other apps which are supposed to see each other.
The odd thing is that it works sometimes and not others (like within 30 minutes it will work then not work. It can connect to the laptop, play a video then will not be working and can’t connect to the laptop. So they can see each other. I was looking at getting a TL-WR902AC as I think I can do port forwarding on that and it allows a bit more bandwidth. Just want to make sure it should work before buying it.
In the above scenario, does the TripMate have Internet access, and is it allowing it’s connected clients (the Rokus and the laptop with PMS on it) to access the Internet?
There are a couple of problems you could be running into here:
1 the laptop can’t access the Internet and register with Plex.tv if there’s no Internet access
2 the Rokus can’t find the server if they’ve no Internet access to login to Plex.tv and get an address for it
3 if your TripMate does have an Internet connection (from the hotel?) it’s almost certainly going to be NAT’d rfc1918 address. This means your equipment will probably be double-NAT’ing for their Internet connection, which could cause all manner of problems, notably that Remote Access is unavailable
1 & 2 could be addressed by adding your PMS as a static server so they don’t need to contact Plex.tv for the info, but Plex really likes an Internet connection.
3 shouldn’t affect you if you can get your clients talking directly to the server as above.
Also, due to the way wifi works, you’d be better off having the laptop on a wired connection to the TripMate if you can, otherwise you’ll be sending every packet of streaming data over the network twice, and that router is fast in the first place. Using wifi, you’re also at risk of overlapping channels from the hotel’s own wifi. Do a channel scan and pick the best available one. Chances are there won’t be one though…
Thanks for your reply. Yes the tripmate does have internet access (I can reach my home server just fine and play videos off it just fine, I just don’t have the bandwidth allotment to do so.
The laptop has full internet access as well and can reach plex.tv and any other outside side
The Roku’s do have access to the internet (they even can connect to the laptop sometimes just not always)
How do I make my PMS a static server? Yes if they had wired internet available to the Tripmate I would do that but it’s only a WAN port unfortunately. I did this with a Roku Stick last week and had no problems but only did it for one night. Definitely not overlapping channels as I already checked the channels used by the Hotel’s Wifi and mine is not on a clogged channel.
I’m not exactly sure on Roku (didn’t they change there UI recently?) but there should be an option in settings for setting up one or two static servers. You just enter the IP address of your laptop (you’ll need to give it a static IP address on your TripMate’s wifi) and the PMS port (usually 32400) and you’ll be good to go.
NB. you’re making this change on the client, not the server. The Plex clients usually need to login to Plex.tv with your account credentials to get a list of your servers before they can connect. This bypasses the need for an Internet connection and will allow your client to connect directly to the server.
I think it may be something on my laptop blocking incoming requests. I don’t have full control over the laptop (Company) so perhaps they have something blocked. I may need to try something like an RPI3 or similar to see if I can get that to work instead.
Thanks, yeah I thought of that but I was trying to stay small (due to traveling with it on planes and the like) and expense ($200 for the shield vs Free for the laptop or $50 or so for the PI3) Also I heard PMS on the Shield isn’t all that great. I’m using the Roku Media player right now to just get by on this trip but it sucks
ok well your laptop/server and roku clients are probably not the problem, I would suspect your router is the primary culprit, along with the issues gary mentioned above.
all that said, if you don’t have full control of your laptop, it would probably be safer to keep pms and your personal media off it in any case (to avoid any liability or employment issues).
I was only doing it for these two trips because I didn’t have a chance to buy any other hardware and set it up and it worked fine last week but I still think it was an indirect connection. I’ll just have to rethink what the best option is. I want to have something that will direct play to my Ultras when on a family vacation This was more of a proof of concept LOL
I am thinking I might just use Kodi on an Android TV Box rather than worry about a client/server scenario. They are cheap enough and I can scrape using kodi at home.
I still use my laptop for work and stuff while watching TV.
There are two TVs I need to serve and can’t do that with a single laptop. Thats why plex would be great since one TV can watch one thing and the other TV another show but I only have to store the files once.
You know… At my cabin, where I don’t have internet… I use Kodi on an Intel Compute Stick with a portable hard drive. Works wonders. I know it’s not very Plex-like. But it does the job. No internet necessary if I do all the scans and such while it’s hooked up at home.
Never used an Intel Compute Stick. Does it play the bigger MKV files just fine? That would work for me. I’d rather only have one source for the file system but I used WDTVs for years with USB sticks but they won’t play HEVC x265 stuff which I am getting more and more of so would need to play that. Do you think the Intel Compute stick would play that?
It’s Kodi on the thing that makes it work… It’s essentially a Windows 10 PC. Everything I throw at it plays fine. Haven’t had one hiccup.
If you’re talking hotels, it can hop on the internet too, and through various windows apps, it would function similarly to other types of streaming devices. I bought a simple USB PC remote to control the whole thing.
EDIT: I think the one I have is the M3 (CS325) processor version. They have a lower end Atom (CS125), and a higher end M5 (CS525). I got the middle one of what I believe is the second generation. Looks like they might have a new line out now.
EDIT EDIT: One of the rare instances, someone uses Kodi as intended.
