OK, so here is the deal.

I have my videos in an external HDD and I want to be able to view them without having to plug it into every device I want to view it in. We have so many devices with WiFi capability lying around the house, smartphones, tablets, TVs and the like.

For now I want to be able to access the videos on my HDD from my smartphone’s file manager, given it supports network storage. Many file managers available on the play store allow network storage access. I’ll add them here or in my next parts of the blog.

I originally planned this as one post, but looks like my questions grew as I started this project. I have referred to many posts and tutorials online on how this can be done and have experimented on a Pi I have lying around. None worked for me. So, as a person who has lost touch with my inner nerd, I want to rekindle him (my inner nerd that is) and use my Pi for something.

The hardware:

1. An old WD expansion drive, containing my media
2. A Raspberry Pi 3b+ on which I installed using NOOBs, well the memory card at least (16GB Sandisk class 10)
3. An HDMI compatible monitor to help with any settings/running the setup scripts
4. A wireless mouse, keyboard – they actually demand way less power than connecting a wired mouse/keyboard
5. A 20k MAh power bank for continuous power – that is the only power supply I have which give 2.4 A output over 5 volts.

The 20000 foot view of what to do:

1. Install the default NOOBs package available on the Pi’s website
2. Install Samba server
3. Mount the HDD to a folder created on the Pi’s file system
4. Set the server and the mounting to happen automatically every time you start the device

I have understood everything above till yet and hence, for now, won’t go forward in this part of the post. Planning to go deeper soon, hopefully this weekend. Look out for Part#2 of this post.