Build your own media streamer
YOU’LL NEED THIS
RASPBERRY PI 5 (will work with a RPi 4), keyboard/mouse for setup, remote control recommended for long-term use. You’ll be installing KonstaKANG’s unofficial LineageOS 21
Android TV build.
ARE YOU FED UP WITH
having to junk your streaming stick or box every few years because it’s either no longer supported or become too sluggish to use? We were, which is why we decided to explore the viability of building our own streaming box—one where the hardware wouldn’t be rendered obsolete, and which left us in control of system updates and upgrades.
We wanted a box that used an established OS designed for the big screen, which is why we got all excited when we discovered the KonstaKANG website (https://konstakang.com) and its series of unofficial Android and Android TV builds for the Raspberry Pi.
In this tutorial, we’ll take you through the process of building your own streaming box, setting it up, and using it to access streaming services and your own media. We set a budget of around $100, and tried to emulate similar boxes as closely as possible. The results were mixed, as we reveal in the closing boxout, but the promise is there—particularly for Plex and Jellyfin users, and at least this box will only be rendered obsolete by our own demands.
–NICK PEERS
1ASSEMBLE THE BOX
After you’ve purchased your hardware—see the boxout for what you’ll need—your first job will be to assemble it. This is straightforward, but if you’ve purchased a FLIRC case, you’ll need to fit three additional components before encasing your Pi inside it. First, make sure you place the thermal pad on your Pi’s CPU, as shown in
[Image A].
This case relies on a heatsink to cool your Pi, ensuring it runs silently.
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Once done, you’ll also need to fit the light pipe and power button to the case—this is a quick 35-second job, courtesy of a YouTube video (www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3hknhsOerU). It’s a simple job, involving sliding the plastic lightpipe/power piece into place, and then pushing it. Once done, you can fit the Pi to the bottom of the case, then place the main part of the case over the top, before carefully flipping it over and screwing the Pi into place using the four supplied screws.
21.0-xxx-UNOFFICIAL-KonstaKANG-rpi5-atv.img from inside it—the extracted image should be 7GB in size.
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You’ll also want to download other files from this page, so scroll down to the FAQ section to find links for KonstaKANG-rpi-resize.zip, KonstaKANGrpi-widevine-14.zip, and MindTheGapps-14.0.0-arm64ATV-full-20240523_192016.zip (the Magisk link— which provides root access to the OS—is optional, but not required for this tutorial). Once downloaded, copy these files to a FAT32-formatted USB thumb drive.