Anthias as a Media Center

Scenario: A developer wants to create a media center using Anthias, a popular open-source digital signage platform. In this guide, we will explore how to set up and configure Kodi, a popular media center software, on Anthias.

Prerequisites:

  • Familiarity with the Anthias codebase and its components
  • A Raspberry Pi device with Anthias installed
  • Basic knowledge of the command line
  1. Install Kodi:

First, we need to install Kodi on our Anthias device. Kodi is an open-source media player software that can be used to play and manage various digital media, including videos, music, and images.

To install Kodi on Anthias, follow these steps:

a. Update the package list:

sudo apt update

b. Install the dependencies:

sudo apt install -y libsdl1.2-dev libsdl-image1.2-dev libsdl-mixer1.2-dev libsdl-ttf2.0-dev libavformat-dev libavcodec-dev libavresample-dev libswscale-dev libfreetype6-dev libjpeg62-turbo-dev libpng-dev libzip-dev libxml2-dev libgtk-3-dev libatlas-base-dev libatlas-dev libgstreamer1.0-0 libgstreamer1.0-plugins-base1.0 libgstreamer1.0-plugins-good1.0 libgstreamer1.0-plugins-bad1.0 libgstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly1.0

c. Download and install Kodi:

cd ~
wget -qO kodi-install.sh https://github.com/TeamKodi/Kodi/releases/download/v19.4/kodi-install-raspbian.sh
chmod +x kodi-install.sh
sudo ./kodi-install.sh
  1. Configure Kodi:

After installing Kodi, we need to configure it to work with Anthias.

a. Start Kodi:

cd ~/RetroPie-Setup/kodi
./kodi

b. Go to the “System” settings and select “Interface settings.”

c. Under “Main Menu Items,” enable “Files” and “Pictures.”

d. Go back to the main menu and select “Videos.”

e. Under “File manager,” add a new source by clicking on the “Add source” button. Name it “Local media” and set the path to “/mnt/usd/media” (or the path to your media directory).

f. Go back to the main menu and select “Pictures.”

g. Under “Files,” add a new source by clicking on the “Add source” button. Name it “Local media” and set the path to “/mnt/usd/media/images” (or the path to your images directory).

h. Repeat the process for “Music” and set the path to “/mnt/usd/media/music” (or the path to your music directory).

i. Restart Kodi for the changes to take effect.

  1. Accessing Kodi from Anthias:

Now that Kodi is installed and configured, we can access it from the Anthias web interface.

a. Go to the Anthias web interface by opening a web browser and navigating to the IP address of your Anthias device.

b. Log in to the Anthias web interface using your username and password.

c. Click on the “Media” tab in the left-hand menu.

d. Under “Media Players,” click on “Add Media Player.”

e. Name the media player “Kodi” and set the URL to “http://localhost:8080/xmlui” (without quotes).

f. Save the changes and restart the Anthias web interface.

g. Go back to the “Media” tab and click on “Kodi.” You should now see the Kodi media center interface.

Tests:

To verify that the media center is working correctly, try playing a video, music file, or image using Kodi through the Anthias web interface.

Additionally, you can check the Kodi logs for any errors or issues by navigating to the “Logs” tab in the Anthias web interface and selecting “Kodi.”