Combination of VPN gateway and multimedia device imaginable on basis of LibreELEC?

    Hi all.

    I am ramping up my business travelling recently, and was now wondering whether I could have a single, tiny device with me for the following purpose:

    • connect to hotel wifi
    • establish VPN to my private home
    • all other devices (mobile, laptop, ...) connect to 2nd wifi adapter and use VPN connection
    • attach to hotel TV via HDMI cable
    • stream Amazon Prime videos on hotel TV
    • all pre-configured/scripted, since I won't have keyboard with me. Would be great when I could use and app on my mobile phone to enter the hotel wifi credentials and the rest would work automatically.


    Have not reseached a lot so far, but I cannot find such a device at quick browsing. But it seems, those FireHD stick things are too bricked to customize those. So maybe building on top of a regular Linux might be an option.


    What do you think?

    BR, Marcus

    I spend a lot of time in Hotels with work and have a couple of small devices. It's a 50/50 idea. Networking is the achilles heel:

    • Hotels have rubbish WiFi
    • LE has no interface for handling WiFi captive portals
    • LE has no interface for handling Ethernet tethering
    • ConnMan has no interface for tethering NIC selection
    • Hotels have inadequate bandwidth
    • Kodi doesn't support transcoding to deal with bandwidth
    • Kodi expects 'Library' DBs and media files to be LAN accessible

    ConnMan is intentionally simple; it was built for a phone which has a maximum of one interface per interface type (Wifi, Ethernet, etc.) so while it will work in multi-NIC scenarios it's not particularly elegant sometimes.

    After connecting to hotel WiFi it's often easier to connect to the LE device over Ethernet to bypass whatever captive portal or auth system the hotel has. Or vice-versa; if there is Ethernet in the room, use it as it'll be more stable. LE doesn't handle swapping the tethering NIC well (currently needs to be done over SSH).

    I use Kodi at home but also have a Plex server running on the NAS that contains media as this doesn't require me to run a VPN to connect to the library, and will transcode to a smaller resolution/bitrate on-demand based on the available bandwidth, although it can take a while to iterate down the quality ladder to a point where it works. I'm not wow'd with Plex, and if I hadn't been given a free lifetime pass some years ago (when the Plex 'embedded' fork of LE was a thing) I'd probably go looking for something else.

    Most of the time connecting a laptop to the TV in the room with an HDMI cable and using Plex from macOS (with flirc USB IR for remote work) requires considerably less effort, and ensures the laptop is on a table/desk not on the bed .. better for Zzz quality.