Here’s what I’m trying to accomplish. I’ll describe it as I do it now, on my laptop, and then ask if it can be accomplished using Rasplex on a PI2.
Book a room at a hotel, and connect to their WiFi. Because most hotels use a “captive portal”, this mean you have to have web browser capabilities so you can authenticate, accept there terms, blah, blah, blah. Once connected and authenticated, I use OpenVPN client to establish a secure connection to my home LAN (using a routed TUN interface). Next I fire up a web browser and access he PLEX web client, just as if I were local on my home LAN.
Note that I am not using PLEX accounts, and I do not want to (I have security concerns with that). Hence my use of VPN instead.
So, my question is, when running Rasplex on a PI2, do you have the ability (and horsepower) to do all of the above? Note that the only thing I am gaining by considering a PI2 over my laptop is the ability to use the bigger screen on the hotel’s TV set. If my laptop were not so old, and had an HDMI output, I would just attach with a cable and be done with it. I considered trying to do something with a ChromeCast, a Firestick or Roku but the idea of using a PI2 intrigues me as I am a Linux geek.
If my plans would not work using Rasplex, another option would be to use a generic distro on the PI2 and the Plex Web interface (basically, use the PI2 as a super-small laptop and do exactly what I’m currently doing with the laptop).
Also, it would be nice to install VLC on the PI2 for times when the hotel WiFi is just not up to snuff speed-wise to stream movies. Use VLC to play a movie stored on some connected USB thumbdrive, portable harddisk, etc.
I realize these questions are as much about the PI2 as about Rasplex specifically. But I don’t know enough about Rasplex and the PI2 to know if Rasplex can coexist well with, and the PI2 have enough horsepower for, what I’d called “generic Linux computer capabilities” (OpenVPN, VLC, web browser, etc.)
I was planning on doing something similar, but not with two PI’s … with one PI and my laptop. The laptop would be the secondary PMS, storing a few movies locally, a subset of the media libray available from my home PMS. As a matter of fact, I just ordered a second WiFi adapter two days ago for the laptop so that I’d have both the internal laptop WiFi and a second Wifi. For those times when the hotel does not have a wired ethernet port (many are moving in this direction - they provide WiFi only, no hardware jack). When I ordered that WiFi dongle two days ago, I was thinking of using a Roku as the client. But now having found out about Rasplex, I am considering that instead of the Roku. Hopefully my WiFi dongle will work on the PI2 if I want to use it there (it’s a TP-Link TL-WN722N 150mbps N). It should, because it’s chipset has been well supported by the Linux kernal for quite a while now.
Anyway, I’d still like to know if Rasplex can coexist on a single PI2 with OpenVPN, a web browser, VLC, etc. I get the impression that Rasplex must boot directly into the PLEX gui (I’ve never seen it in action, so I’m just guessing). But I assume you can get out of that PLEX application, to a commandline on the PI2, to start up other applications (OpenVPN, web browser, etc.) But how troublesome that is could depend on how Rasplex is implemented. I’m old school in Linux/Unix, several decades of experience, but new to using any kind of small embedded device like a PI2.
Sorry, you can’t run anything else on Rasplex, which is basically OpenELEC (a very much stripped down Linux OS and Kodi) with a much modified Plex HT on top of that, with a number of major mods to the Kodi code. There is no dpkg or apt-get to install anything else.
Thanks. Rethinking my question, it’s somewhat of a silly question for me to have asked anyway. I always have my laptop on trips, so I can always use that to access the hotel WiFi, navigate the captive portal and establish the VPN. Then, using hostapd on the laptop I could provide an access point, just for Rasplex, that routes it right on down the VPN tunnel to my home PMS. Or the laptop can run a local PMS itself in the absense of useful hotel WiFi. Even better would be to skip the WiFi to the Rasplex and plug an ethernet cable from the PI2 to my laptop. There’s got to be some software package that allows my Linux laptop to act as a router for a client attached its ethernet port. I know you can have “master” mode for WiFi adapters (that support it), is there such a thing for ethernet adapters? I hope there’s something like that. I will have to research…
Also, I assume there’s some “dual boot” capability for the PI2 where I could have a couple of OS’es on the same SD card, Rasplex being one of those. I could choose a different OS/distro to boot if I wanted VLC or some other application to run on the PI2.
@haertig said:
Thanks. Rethinking my question, it’s somewhat of a silly question for me to have asked anyway. I always have my laptop on trips, so I can always use that to access the hotel WiFi, navigate the captive portal and establish the VPN. Then, using hostapd on the laptop I could provide an access point, just for Rasplex, that routes it right on down the VPN tunnel to my home PMS. Or the laptop can run a local PMS itself in the absense of useful hotel WiFi. Even better would be to skip the WiFi to the Rasplex and plug an ethernet cable from the PI2 to my laptop. There’s got to be some software package that allows my Linux laptop to act as a router for a client attached its ethernet port. I know you can have “master” mode for WiFi adapters (that support it), is there such a thing for ethernet adapters? I hope there’s something like that. I will have to research…
Use hostapd and isc-dhcp-server, the guidance in my document for the Pi PMS can be implemented on any Linux installation.
@haertig said:
Also, I assume there’s some “dual boot” capability for the PI2 where I could have a couple of OS’es on the same SD card, Rasplex being one of those. I could choose a different OS/distro to boot if I wanted VLC or some other application to run on the PI2.
@haertig Do you have a smartphone - could you setup a wifi hotspot and connect to the VPN via your 'phone, connecting your RPI2 to that hotspot on the 'phone?
@TonyMcConnell:
That idea should work well, first using a browser on the phone to negotiate Internet access with the hotel portal and then establishing the VPN connection of the phone to your home LAN. The additional connection from RasPlex on the RPi2 to the VPN via hotspot should not concern the hotel portal at all.
On the other hand, a similar method should also work without a smartphone, if you have hotspot capability in a laptop PC.
That said, I’ve not tried either of those methods myself, nor will I have occasion to do so in any near future, so they need to be verified by someone else.
@dlanor well, I could give it a try I guess, I have both a smartphone, a VPN to home, an RPI2 (currently without Rasplex). Would have to go via neighbours wifi or mobile network. I have a sneaking suspicion that my iPhone won’t allow a hotspot at same time as wifi though…
Edit: yes, it bins the wireless client and connects to 3g mobile.
@TonyMcConnell:
I agree that this could be hard to do with iPhone and most other smartphones, if they only allow a single WiFi instance (though I think some few allow two). But it should still be possible to do with a laptop having two WiFi adapters (adding a USB adapter as the laptops usually only have one adapter built-in).
So the best/easiest solution for haertig (the original poster) could be to simply plug in a USB adapter and run some hotspot software for it on his laptop.
