insideKENT Magazine Issue 56 - November 2016 | Page 150

GADGETS+TECH

THE TECH NINJA
the Pi’s the limit!

The Raspberry Pi has revolutionised computing in the past few years,
making it cheap and affordable and placing the ability to build and
program computers back into the hands of anyone who wants to have
a go. But it’s not just for programming! BY LUKE YATES

Here are three easy, useful and fun ways you can
employ these super little computers around your
house:

More information about XBian and how to install
it here: www.xbian.org
A retro arcade machine

An On-demand Media Player
PiPlay (formerly PiMAME) is an operating system
designed to let you play all those fantastic old
video games from the 80s and 90s. PiPlay allows
this by using various video game console/machine
emulators (such as MAME, Megadrive and the
Atari 2600), so you will need to ensure that you
can obtain (legal!) copies of the game roms – but
there are lots of websites online for that.

Kodi is an app that allows you to play videos and
music, but also allows you to stream video, TV
and film from all over the internet. I regularly use
mine to watch old favourite TV shows, such as
Red Dwarf, or to catch live(ish) sports from other
countries; and my daughter, who is cool and
non-geeky and even has an iPhone, loves the
Kodi box because she can watch Dance Moms
and somebody called Zoella on it.
It is very easy to add channels to Kodi, giving
you access to services such as BBC iPlayer,
Spotify or even Red Bull TV.
It’s also a cinch to install Kodi – you just need to
get a copy of XBian (which is of course FREE!).
This involves installing the software onto an SD
memory card using an app on a laptop or desktop
– then you just plug the card into the Pi board

and hey presto – your own shiny Kodi media
player will hum to life.
Another very cool feature of Kodi is the ability to
use your phone or tablet as a remote control, so
once your system is up and running, you won’t
even need a keyboard and mouse attached!

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To do the newer, more graphics-intensive games
justice, you’re going to need one of the higher
end Raspbery Pi 2 or 3 machines, but if you are
a fan of classics such as Frogger and Donkey
Kong, it should work on just about any model.
Installation of PiPlay is pretty easy – just load a
copy of it onto an SD card and plug into your
Raspberry Pi. However, setting up each game’s
machine emulator takes a little bit of messing
about, which if you are into such things can be