wkearney99
Senior Member
When traveling, and on our boat, it's been convenient to bring along something capable of acting as a standalone media source. Lots of hurdles have existed in the past, and a few persist today. I've lugged along a combination of gizmos to work around a lot of these. Like a hotspot capable router to make cellular connections, when the local wifi/ethernet was too slow or restricted.
Most recently I've had luck using a SOHO router running an OpenWRT build to do this, along with act as a wifi client to the local network. Some hotels no longer offer wired ethernet in-room, but their local wifi won't support multicast devices like a Chromecast. Local devices connecting to that, and then it makes another wifi connection for the Internet. Not ideal, what with double-NAT networking, but better than nothing.
I've also lugged along a laptop running a Plex server. This to allow using a tablet or phone running the Plex app to instruct the server to cast video to a Chromecast on the TV. Using a Chromecast into the TV, and casting to it, allows avoiding trying to string an HDMI cable from the laptop to the TV. Not ideal in many hotel rooms, for many reasons. Most notably theft risks or cleaning services knocking it off the furniture.
But it works pretty well, actually. Trouble is the rats nest of cables.
I'm entertaining the idea of configuring a fanless miniPC to act as a single box for all this. Potentially running a Hypervisor or docker on it to allow hosting the 'most suitable' OS for the various tasks. I'm well acquainted with the hassles of VMs (pass-through hardware, etc) so it won't be without complicated config struggles and careful hardware selection. With modern systems there's a lot more CPU and resources available.
I'm not talking about some Android-based TV setup (like an nVidia Sheild TV). Lots of those run afoul of "you can't get there from here" limits to their OS. Or a ton of tapping through a UI to get things configured.
My expectation is to boot the beast, make a wifi connection to it's network and use web pages, terminal or remote desktop connection (vnc, rdp, etc) to configure how it should uplink. Local wifi, wired or cell, and whether to maintain a nailed-up VPN back home. This has been do-able on some SOHO routers running OpenWRT for a while. I've got a Wirie setup on my boat that also does this (cell modem and pushbullet).
Anyway, it's early days and I've not yet found a good candidate to act as the VM host. The Qotom fanless PC I've got as a my home router only supports 8gb via a single so-dimm slot. I'm scouring the web looking for ones with more RAM support.
Most recently I've had luck using a SOHO router running an OpenWRT build to do this, along with act as a wifi client to the local network. Some hotels no longer offer wired ethernet in-room, but their local wifi won't support multicast devices like a Chromecast. Local devices connecting to that, and then it makes another wifi connection for the Internet. Not ideal, what with double-NAT networking, but better than nothing.
I've also lugged along a laptop running a Plex server. This to allow using a tablet or phone running the Plex app to instruct the server to cast video to a Chromecast on the TV. Using a Chromecast into the TV, and casting to it, allows avoiding trying to string an HDMI cable from the laptop to the TV. Not ideal in many hotel rooms, for many reasons. Most notably theft risks or cleaning services knocking it off the furniture.
But it works pretty well, actually. Trouble is the rats nest of cables.
I'm entertaining the idea of configuring a fanless miniPC to act as a single box for all this. Potentially running a Hypervisor or docker on it to allow hosting the 'most suitable' OS for the various tasks. I'm well acquainted with the hassles of VMs (pass-through hardware, etc) so it won't be without complicated config struggles and careful hardware selection. With modern systems there's a lot more CPU and resources available.
I'm not talking about some Android-based TV setup (like an nVidia Sheild TV). Lots of those run afoul of "you can't get there from here" limits to their OS. Or a ton of tapping through a UI to get things configured.
My expectation is to boot the beast, make a wifi connection to it's network and use web pages, terminal or remote desktop connection (vnc, rdp, etc) to configure how it should uplink. Local wifi, wired or cell, and whether to maintain a nailed-up VPN back home. This has been do-able on some SOHO routers running OpenWRT for a while. I've got a Wirie setup on my boat that also does this (cell modem and pushbullet).
Anyway, it's early days and I've not yet found a good candidate to act as the VM host. The Qotom fanless PC I've got as a my home router only supports 8gb via a single so-dimm slot. I'm scouring the web looking for ones with more RAM support.
