Emby in the Car

[fba 1]

Hi all,

 

I've posted on here before about trying to use Emby in the car.   I almost have my setup ready for a road trip next weekend, but I have hit some annoying snags.   The first one involves my premiere key.   I can put the key in, and everything works until I reboot the box.   After power cycling the box, the key will show up as invalid.   I suspect this is because the RTC on the box doesn't have a battery (it is an ODroid-C1+) so the clock is set back to 1981.   However, once I fix the date and time, the key still shows up as invalid unless I plug the box in to a network with an internet connection.

 

So, the question is, does Emby invalidate the key if it is launched on a system with a date that is too old?   And, if I put an RTC battery on the device so it doesn't lose the date, will I still have problems with the key becoming invalid?    There will be significant areas of my trip where even cellular Internet access will be spotty at best, and I'd rather not run out of movies for my 5 year old.   (I believe I have the materials necessary to add an RTC to the box.  I just want to be fairly sure that should fix the problem before I put the effort in.

 

 

Then, a follow-on question.   When I do fix the time, and get the Emby server happy with the key, I am unable to play movies on my Android phone.   The phone is able to talk to the server, as I am seeing movie posters and data.  I also see log entries indicating that my phone is connected and requesting data.   However, when I tap the play button, nothing happens.   I can tap it over and over, wait for 10-15 minutes, and I don't get anything.  No error message, or video.   The app just acts as if I have not tapped anything.   This seems to happen no matter if the server has an Internet connection, or not.

 

The only thing I can think of is that perhaps Emby is trying to transcode the video.   But, the video is stored at 640x480 resolution, IIRC, and I have managed to get the ODroid to stream it to my phone before.   So, it seems more like something isn't working quite right in either the Android app, or in the server.   So, is there anything I can do to troubleshoot it?

 

 

Last, but not least, I plan to run the root filesystem on the ODroid as a read-only filesystem.   This is to handle the situation where the car is turned off, and the box suddenly loses power.  (Basically to avoid corruption of the FS.)   From what I have seen, Emby stores everything in the "ProgramData-Server" directory.   Does that directory need to be writable?   Or does it only need to be writable when you are updating metadata?    If it does need to be writable, will Emby freak out if the writes are stored to a RAM disk?  (i.e. If it writes something there, and then the device is rebooted and what it wrote is no longer there, will Emby have a problem with that?)

 

Thanks!

[Luke 42077]

hi, yes program data needs to be writeable at all times. underneath that folder there is then a /data folder. if that folder gets wiped it will have to rescan the library all over again.

 

We can take a look at the playback issue, but need more info. Please see: http://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/15638-how-to-report-an-android-problem/

 

Thanks.

[fba 1]

Thanks Luke!   I added an RTC battery, and that seems to have made the server pieces happy.   With a bit more testing, I think I have discovered the issue with Android, so I'll post over in the Android area to ask the follow-up question.

 

Thanks again!