The Raspberry Pi Thread

I can't for the life of me figure out how to play files from my external USB hard drive. This Linux stuff is all new to me.

alphanumeric said:

I can't for the life of me figure out how to play files from my external USB hard drive. This Linux stuff is all new to me.

So far I am only using USB flashdrive to play files from.

I followed the second part of this youtube tutorial (first part is mounting NAS).

Looks like it's the USB hard drive that's the issue. I plugged a USB thumb drive in and it showed up in the menu. I don't think the USB hard drive is getting detected, it may not be getting enough power. It's a laptop IDE drive in an unpowered enclosure. It has two USB plugs, one is Data and power the other power only. That has to be my one biggest gripe with the Pi, not enough current available at the USB ports. This is my Pi B+ that I'm running OPENELECT on. My new model 2 is now connected to my mini touch screen. I need to get a short HDMI cable for it to make it semi portable and easily useable. I have the screen and the Pi mounted to an old Nintendo rigid oversized plastic mouse pad. I can put it in my lap to play with. I bought a Stylus for it too, to make it easier to use the touch screen. My knobby finger tip just wasn't cutting it. Less chance of smudges and scratches that way too.

caperjack said:

didnt get that far yet ,i bought a micro sd card at wally -world today and have been trying to install a different os,found out i need to read more before i stat trying ,the xbmc ones are only for Pi-1 and the snappy Ubuntu is a developers version ,was looking for commands way to early ,lol

I've run RASPBMC and OPENELECT on my B+. The OPENELECT I'm running now is newer than what is listed on the Pi downloads site. It's OpenELEC-RPi.arm-5.0.4.img. They also have a OpenELEC-RPi2.arm-5.0.4.img for the model 2. OpenELEC Mediacenter - Get OpenELEC . One thing I noticed is you have to be careful what you use to image the card, hardware wise. I have one USB to micro SD dongle the errors every time I use Win32diskimager. It works fine for normal use, file transfers etc though. My other dongle which is for full sized cards works fine for imaging. It had me messed up for a while thinking my images were corrupt.

I'll buy any of the PI stuff you decide you don't want or need.

badrobot said:

Did you try the external hard drive on pi 2?

I don't think so? I'm running RASPBIAN on it at the moment. I'll connect it up latter on today and see if it works. As near as I can tell though the 2 suffers from the same power issues as the B+. If I connect my display and my WIFI dongle at the same time the screen flashes on and off. Kind of disappointing. I haven't tried the "max_usb_current=1" config edit on it yet either. That's supposed to give you 1.2 Amps out instead of 600 MA at the USB ports. I think it only works from RASPBIAN though? I'll have to google it again, and reread what it does etc.

alphanumeric said:

I don't think so? I'm running RASPBIAN on it at the moment. I'll connect it up latter on today and see if it works. As near as I can tell though the 2 suffers from the same power issues as the B+. If I connect my display and my WIFI dongle at the same time the screen flashes on and off. Kind of disappointing. I haven't tried the "max_usb_current=1" config edit on it yet either. That's supposed to give you 1.2 Amps out instead of 600 MA at the USB ports. I think it only works from RASPBIAN though? I'll have to google it again, and reread what it does etc.

You can't expect the Pi's power supply to power up that screen. Even regular tablets gets discharged fast if you leave the screen on. The solution is just a powered hub. :)