New user wanting to use Retropie and Plex Media Server

HomeGrownHeroz

Hi,

I have finally taken the plunge and ordered my first Raspberry Pi 3 :) I have never used one before so my knowledge of installing and customising things like this is very limited. I have ordered the Desktop starter kit that comes preinstalled with Noobs.

My goal is to primarily setup the Pi to be a Plex server but would also like to have Retropie installed too. From what I have read so far my options appear to be;

Dual booting RasPlex and Retropie
Installing Plex Media Server using the prodecure here (Not sure what this is called exactly)
Install both Retropie, Kodi and then the Plex addon

My questions though are what setup would potentially work best? I read that RasPlex is intended to be the client and not the server. Although I may primarily be using Plex as a client on the Pi I would prefer the option of being able to use it as a server should I be away from my home.

Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

mattrixk

@HomeGrownHeroz: I know this isn't exactly what you are asking, but I thought I'd tell you my setup anyway. I have a RetroPie/OpenElec (Kodi) dual-boot that I got from MultiBootPi. I tried out Plex, but found I didn't like it too much. I discovered a different media server called Emby that also has a Kodi addon, and it works really well for me. I can update everything on my PC and all the changes are mirrored on Kodi (after a quick reboot).

The only down side for me is, I can't install Emby on my NAS, so I use my PC as the server. That means that if my PC is off (say, after an automatic update or something), then I can't play any of the media. I do have a way around it though: I have Emby set up to put all the images and metadata in the same folders as the video files, so I have a second profile on Kodi that says to just use the local info of my NAS. (I don't know if I'm explaining this well, but it all works for me).

HomeGrownHeroz

Re: New user wanting to use Retropie and Plex Media Server

Thanks for the suggestion but I managed to get it working. It was a lot of trial and error as I had a permissions error when following this tutorial.

For anyone that also ends up following that guide using an NTFS hard drive for their media, I had to download a package to get it to show up.

Now, what I want to do is be able to load Retropie. I've seen videos of multiboot setups where it can be accessed through Raspbian using a button like this one.

Is it possible to now install retropie as if it was a program which I can just load as an when I want to use it in Raspbian?

Thanks

Rascas

I think you are taking the wrong aproach. If you want to run Plex media server, this should be a server always running, to be acessible by all the other machines on the network, all the time, so taking on a multiboot aproach, when you reboot to another system, Plex media server will not be running.

You can have all that you want in RetroPie itself, take the latest image, flash it to a SD Card, then install Kodi, Pixel desktop and Plex Media Server.
This way you don't need to reboot and loose something that is not running like the Plex media server. Just keep in mind that Plex Media Server running in the background, uses some resources, so if you are playing more demanding emulators/games, it can be slower.
A different but similar way is to take the latest Raspbian image, flash it to a SD Card, install RetroPie, install Kodi and Plex Media Server.

EDIT: For what I understood, you are in the process of doing the second option I mentioned, so you can now install RetroPie following this:
https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/Manual-Installation

HomeGrownHeroz

@Rascas

Thanks for your reply.

At the moment, the server is working perfectly and it was a pain to setup so I am reluctant to undo anything at the moment lol. Just to confirm what my initial intentions were, I mainly wanted to use the Pi for a plex server, so I have already achieved that :) Being able to run retropie alongside it would be a great bonus. So really, if I then loaded Retropie I wouldn't be too fussed if the plex server was currently unavailable whilst using it.

When searching, I couldn't really find much on Plex for Kodi being setup as a media server but more used as a client. Are you able to share any known links or guides on Kodi being setup with Plex being the server that is reading from external drives plugged into the Pi?

My other concern was that I only really wanted Plex, so I didn't really want to mess about with Kodi. And I wasn't sure how easy it would be to boot the Pi past Kodi and straight into Plex for example.

Do you have any other advice or thoughts?

Rascas

@HomeGrownHeroz Kodi can't act as a Plex Media Server, they are two different things, with some similar features.
Kodi can also act as a media server, although in a different way, all devices needs to have a full Kodi installation. Plex is easier to setup, as a media server and the respective clients.
What you can do in Kodi is using it as a Plex Client, using the addon below, which will be connected to a Plex Media Server, that is what you installed in Raspbian.
https://kodi.tv/plex-add-on-for-kodi