Modifications

RV Media Server

daniel
RV Network

I work in IT and have several server and network services I like at home. I would like to replicate this with a low power solution for the RV. Intel’s NUC platform fits the bill well. I don’t need anything high powered but I wanted something with more juice then a Raspberry Pi like I used for the VenusOS monitoring and display. I purchased a used NUC with gen7 (Kaby Lake) i5 Intel CPU, single 8GB RAM SO-DIMM, and 250GB SATA SSD drive. I added another stick of 8GB RAM and a 2TB M.2 NMVe SSD drive also for cheap from ebay.

System specs: Intel NUC7i5BNH, 16GB RAM, 250GB Boot SSD, 2TB NMVe for media storage.

I installed Debian which is my preferred Linux distribution. After playing with BIOS settings the idle power consumption measured with a AC outlet meter is 8 watts. This is OK but I was hoping it was going to be closer to 5w. If left on it will consume about 15ah in 24 hours at idle. When doing work it jumps up to around 30w.

Use cases:

  • Plex Media Server. Originally I just loaded video content on a thumb drive that I installed in the TCL Roku TVs in the RV. This works sometimes but the video and more commonly the audio format were not always compatible with the Roku media player. To solve this problem a Plex server will automatically transcode any incompatible content into format the TV will support. This will also work with my kids Kindle tablets if they want to watch something separately or outside. It will also provide a consistent experience that will allow streaming from my Plex server at home when internet is available or streaming from the Plex server in the RV while offline or on a metered/slow connection. With Plex I can stream movies, TV, music, and over the air TV from my antenna at home.
  • 2023 Update: I am now also running Jellyfin as my preferred media server. It does not rely on any internet connectivity making it much more reliable and less flaky then Plex. I also used Tdar to bulk transcode a bunch of my media to h.265 and leave only two channel english audio. This saved significant space.

To power the NUC I want to tie directly into the DC side of the RV which will be more efficient then using the normal AC adapter that would result in the power being converted from DC to AC and back to DC again. The NUC can run on 12-19v DC so it likely could be run directly off the battery power. To give more consistant and cleaner power since the voltage of the battery may dip below 12v at low states of charge I am going to use a 12v to 19v converter. The converter is 95% effecient and takes an input of 10-16v while producing 19v and up-to 6amps.

I will have three switches installed that will let me turn on and off the following

  • Rasberry Pi 3B+ running VenusOS (12v->5v)
  • Media Server (This system) (12v->19v)
  • WifiRanger Teton and Poplar (12v)