On my Raspberry Pi I use XBMC as my Media Center client, it works very well with my media servers but if you’re a Plex user there is another client for the Raspberry Pi that you may want to try. RasPlex is front end to Plex Media Server for the Raspberry Pi, the project isn’t an official Plex client but it is a great community project to bring the Plex features to the Pi.

Technically it’s a port of the Plex client running on top of OpenELEC and to get started with it you download the image and copy to your Raspberry Pi SD card. RasPlex say it currently works on the 512mb Pi but they are working to support the 256mb version. On the site they say it’s a community project and looking at the forums there is a good community building up around it. They even plan to include case modding tips and designed.

The great thing about the Raspberry Pi is you can play with lots of different operating system builds by just swapping out the SD cards. I currently have a few version of XBMC that I interchange and it looks like I have another distribution to try. Look out for a hands on soon and in the mean time you can give it a try by download the image from the RasPlex site. There is also a video showing RasPlex in action.

Here is how the project is described on the RaspPlex site.

Your Media, Your way. Everywhere. Always.

RasPlex fights for the Users

As we make RasPlex the best, cheapest, and most accessible frontend Client for Plex Media Server it is absolutely critical to also to keep the project community driven, free to download and use, but also open source. I don’t want to get rich off of RasPlex. In fact, I have not ever, and don’t plan to ever, take any money out of the RasPlex project. The community has nurtured RasPlex to where it is today, and so it cannot belong to anyone but the community. RasPlex is not mine, it’s yours.

RasPlex means business

The purpose of treating RasPlex like a company is simple – we want it to be taken seriously. We are not officially affiliated with Plex Inc, but we are close friends with them, and they are a great sponsor and supporter of the project. RasPlex will always belong to the community of people that use it. Supporting RasPlex with donations, or by purchasing a heavily discounted case and preflahed SD card enables us to improve and grow RasPlex, by fixing bugs and adding features.

Funds are used to buy and replace test hardware (you wouldn’t believe how fast we burn through SD cards), as “bounty” for developers, and to pay various bills. Our hope is that the RasPlex cases will be the cheapest, best Raspberry Pi cases out there, and that we’ll be able to use them as a continual source of revenue, and as a way of giving back to people who contribute financially to the project. If we can get enough revenue, we hope to hire developers on a part time, or full time basis.

Use it, Fix it, Change it, Upgrade it

RasPlex is meant to be modded, tweaked, customized, and improved. There will even be releases of the CAD models for the case, with instructions on how to build them to get people modding the case to their needs. Of course, I hope that people will buy the cases through us to support the project, but I want to give our users the freedom to improve on the design, with the hopes that they’ll contribute back their changes and ideas to share with everyone. We even have plans to include Emulation Station, so that RasPlex will be a full fledged home entertainment center with support for emulating retro game consoles.

RasPlex everywhere

By feeding all of the funds taken in back into RasPlex, we want to see how big it can get. I want it everywhere. I want everyone using RasPlex to turn every TV in their house into a Smart TV, and to have their media, their way.

I want to kill AppleTV. RasPlex is already a superset of XBMC functionality, and once it has fully matured, it should be comparable to the Roku in terms of features and price, only with a much nicer GUI, and completely FOSS.

RasPlex belongs to YOU. Take what is yours!

We built RasPlex for you, so try it today. Post on our forums. Drop by our chat. Fork us on github. Help us see how far this project can go, and how big it can get.

Thank you for your support,

-Dale Hamel

Creator, Lead developer of RasPlex

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