How to Set up a Raspberry Pi Plex Server?

Plex is one of the most popular Media Server applications. This turns your local content into the streamable content. You can stream all the streamable content if you have some photos, videos, and other media on your device. Raspberry Pi users have been putting the client-side Plex app on the Rasberry Pi for years. Because it wasn’t possible to set up the server-side app on the Raspberry Pi. Fortunately, that has changed now, In this article, we have shown how to set up Raspberry Pi Plex Server in simple steps.

Related: How to Run Raspberry Pi Desktop on Windows or macOS?

How to Set up a Raspberry Pi Plex server?

Things needed for this project:

The primary thing you need for this project is Raspberry Pi (Raspberry Pi 3 is recommended) and a microSD card (minimum 8 GB).keyboard is also required, mouse, and monitor. It is even better if you have a USB drive or external hard drive to store your movies, shows, and music. Your Raspberry Pi Plex server makes it all available to your client devices, So it’s always better to have more resources on your server.

Step 1: The first thing you have to do is install the Raspbian OS on your Raspberry Pi. You are going to run the Plex server on a Raspbian operating system. If you are not aware of how to install Raspbian check out this guide here.

Step 2: After installing the Raspbian, just make sure you have the latest version of the Raspbian. To check this open the command line and type:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Step 3: Now check that you have HTTPS transport package installed. You are going to use the HTTPS transport package in this process. It was automatically installed on the Raspbian OS, but it is better to check that once. Type the following in the command line:

sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https

The above command will install the latest version. If you already have it, you will just get a message.

Step 4: Then add the dev2day repository to your package source list. You need the dev2day repository because it contains Plex. First, you need a crypt O key for the dev2day website.

wget -O – https://dev2day.de/pms/dev2day-pms.gpg.key | sudo apt-key add –

Next, You can add dev2day’s repository to the package source list.

echo “deb https://dev2day.de/pms/ jessie main” | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pms.list

Finally, update the package list.

sudo apt-get update

Step 5: Now, its time to download the Plex

sudo apt-get install -t jessie plexmediaserver

You have to hit “y” when it asks to approve the download.

Step 6: Then set the Plex to run under the Pi user.

sudo nano /etc/default/plexmediaserver.prev

Now your terminal window will fill with a big text document. Look for the line which says

PLEX_MEDIA_SERVER_USER=plex. Delete “plex” and type in “pi,” so that the line reads PLEX_MEDIA_SERVER_USER=pi.

Now hit CTRL+X to exit. Type Y for “yes” to save the changes and hit Enter to stick with your same old file name. Then, in the terminal, type:

sudo service plexmediaserver restart

Step 7: You want your Raspberry Pi Plex server to have the static IP address so that you only need to connect once on each client device. First, get your IP:

hostname -I

Just copy the IP address or write it down. Now open your command line txt file.

sudo nano /boot/cmdline.txt

At the bottom of the command line text file, type ip= followed by the IP address. Save and exit the file (CTRL+X, then Y, then Enter).

Related: How to Use the Raspberry Pi as a Wireless Access Point?

Step 8: Now restart your Pi, You can do this by the command line with sudo reboot.

Step 9: Now you can add files to your server. First, make sure that you have got your files attached to your Raspberry Pi like USB or External hard drive.

Then, open your browser and type in the IP address followed by :32400/web/

Related: How to Use the Raspberry Pi as a Network-Wide Ad Blocker?

This will bring you to the Plex web app. Now you can Sign in or create a new account. After doing this Plex will provide you with the details regarding how things work and will then give you an option to “add library.” Go ahead: select the right type of media, navigate to your files, and then select the folders you wish to add.

Step 10: Connect to your server from client devices. Plex makes this part simple. Open the Plex app from a client device on the same network, and Plex will detect your server for you. If you have not used the web app to claim and populate your server, you can claim it after the app spots it.

Thank you for reading this post.