Libreelec on Pi as Car Media Centre ?

  • Hi,

    I wanted to put a media centre in the car on a cheap Pi.

    General idea:

    1. Pi acts as Wi Fi hot spot.

    2. Pi runs Libreelec

    3. Pi has some kind of audio "hat" to allow 3.5mm audio jack out into stereo AUX input.

    4. Pi has something like a 64 or 128GB SD card holding music and video.

    5. Kodi can be remote controlled via Kodi/Yatse for the purpose of being able to play "into" stereo AUX input.

    6. Kodi set up with Samba shares so that phones/tablets can play media from the SD card. e.g. Kids watching videos on tablet in back while we play music via the stereo in the front.

    Not sure if Libreelec can be set up with a Wifi hotspot....?

    Powering up and down is an issue. I was thinking of some solutions

    a. Somehow, Kodi/Libreelec runs from RAM, only saving settings on flash card. This means it can be switched off instantly, possibly via a simple timer relay 5 mins after I forget to shut it down cleanly without causing corruption.

    b. Somehow, Pi is power controlled using some cheap mechanism of signalling Libreelec to shut down before it pulls a relay on itself to isolate from car supply.

    c. It gets powered on and off manually but otherwise relies on some kind of sleep timer to cause a power off itself.


    Has anyone tried something like this? Is it even possible? Would Libreelec run "headless" on a Pi Zero W or would it require a Pi 3 to do all this?

    Thanks for any help.