I’m looking for an updated way to put Plex in my minivan. I want to be able to put one movie up on the overhead monitor while allowing others to stream alternative movies to their mobile devices.
In my first go at a mobile server I repurposed an old Dell laptop with Ubuntu, added a small USB-powered router, and powered it from a 12-volt automobile power supply. This worked well, though I ultimately had trouble configuring the automatic power shutoff when the car turned off. The laptop would remain on until the battery lost charge and then I couldn’t get it to start back up automatically when the car started again. Dealing with crash recovery was burdensome because I had to interact with the command prompts, which required me to pull out the laptop and tinker with it before I could get back on the road again.
My second attempt was with a Raspberry Pi 3 after a friend suggested the Pi would be more stable in crash recovery. I wired that bad boy under my dashboard and loaded my movies onto a USB drive. Reused the mobile USB-powered router from my previous setup and this seemed to work okay.
I have since sold my previous minivan and repurposed my Raspberry Pi 3 as a Retro Pie for gaming. My new minivan has an overhead monitor, but is too dumb to handle network connections or most movie file formats. I’m thinking of replacing the drop-down DVD player with an Android-capable monitor. This could be a thin client that consumes a Plex stream, but it would be nicer if it could be powerful enough to run the Plex server itself and stream to other devices in the car.
Has anyone seen something that could work as both an overhead monitor and a Plex server with network hosting services?
