Rii Mini Wireless Keyboard and Mouse Review

Wow!  I've only had this device for an hour or so now and it's absolutely brilliant.  As you'll have read from my previous posts, I am the proud owner of a Raspberry Pi that I am using as a Media Centre.  Up until today I was using a full-size USB keyboard to navigate the software as I couldn't find the Remote Control that came with my legacy Dell XPS 420 desktop that I have.

As I have not managed to locate where my remote control is (I have the USB receiver but it's not much use on its own) I decided to buy a compact keyboard and mouse and after several hours of looking at the different options I found the RiiTek RT-MWK01 and promptly ordered it from Amazon as the price was right at just £14.20 compared to over £20 for a lot of the other ones I could see.

It's not the latest model from RiiTek but it certainly does the job and the bonus is that not only is it the size of a typical remote control, it works really, really well and has a backlit keyboard so if you're watching TV with just a table lamp on you wont struggle to see what you're doing with it.

The trackpad is small (and not as useable as one you'd find on a laptop) but is adequate enough for using to operate a media centre on a computer.

Duronic Mini HDMI Switcher

The Duronic HDMI Selector arrived this morning so time to give it a try...

According to the box, the HDMI switch auto switches up to 3 HDMI devices but just in case you have 2 or more HDMI devices on at the same time it comes with a handy remote control that you can use to manually select the HDMI device you want to view.  Failing that, there is a Select button on the HDMI Switch itself that cycles through the 3 different connections.

It supports full 1080p my TV is only 720p so I wont see the benefit of that.  There is a place to plug in a 5V power supply but it doesn't come with one as it's not required for it to function.

There isn't a built-in infrared port, instead you have to plug the enclosed infrared lead in to a port on the side of the HDMI switch.  This means that you can hide the HDMI Switch and the ugly looking wires behind your TV set and just have the infrared receiver on show which makes the place look a lot tidier.

I purchased this switch from Amazon and paid £9.99 + £3.73 delivery for it which is right within my budget (I didn't want to spend any more than £15).  Some people on Amazon were selling this for £19.99 and this is a Sale price as it once was £29.99!  It's a nice device but certainly not worth £19.99 let alone £29.99 - especially when you can get a gold plated version (without a remote control) for £8.99 with free delivery.

At £19.99 - £29.99 I would only give it 2-3 stars but as I only paid £13.72 for it I will give it 4 stars.

Raspberry Pi As A Media Centre Review

It might not be Christmas Day yet but I already have a parcel to unwrap thanks to CPC and the super fast delivery by Royal Mail!

My Raspberry Pi that I ordered from CPC on Sunday has arrived so I now need to get to grips with it so I can set it up to be a Media Centre to play all my media files on my TV.

The first thing I did was to download NOOBS (New Out Of Box Software) which has the RaspBMC option in it which is the software I am using as my Media Centre - it's basically an open source application called XBMC that has been configured to work on the Raspberry Pi.

After downloading the NOOBS file I followed the installation instructions and downloaded, installed and run the SD Formatter utility and formatted the SD Card I ordered using the FAT system.

I then extracted the NOOBS file I had downloaded on to the root of the SD Card and then popped it in to my Raspberry Pi and then turned it on by connecting it to the USB slot of my HP MediaSmart Server.