UPDATE: The initial offer is now closed, hardware ordered and shipping to our assembly/testing location in NY. First round: 27 units to be delivered.
I have opened Round 2 earlier today. We almost have enough member signing ups to confirm Round 2 will proceed.
These ‘Rounds’ are for US build, for North American residents, I still have NUCs available in Australia.
These are 2nd hand reburbished Intel NUCs with new NVME SSD drives (Fast!) and supplied with new Bluetooth remotes. These NUCs are in limited supply, they will become unavailable soon. So as a famous Aussie football coach once said: “Don’t think. Do!”
—————————————-
I’ve been tweaking my Kodi skin for surround music and improving navigation, album filtering etc, and now looking at building some new Intel NUCs for family members. I realise I can build and install a fully setup customised Kodi very quickly, I can clone a disc image onto a SSD drive and it’s ready to use. All a user needs to do is add their media file folder locations in the Kodi media library settings.
These NUCs play all surround audio formats (except DSD is via pcm), 4K HDR video, and will have dedicated customised UI for QQers and come complete with my collection of hundreds of surround artists biographies and thousands of fan art images etc. They can be controlled via a supplied Bluetooth remote, or via smartphone and tablet apps. They are 4" square and come in slim or high cases (high give room for a 2.5" internal hard drive):
The NUCs run silently while playing music. When when turned on, the UI starts at the Music menu and allows viewing your albums by types: Atmos, Quad, Upmixes, Concerts (videos), Stereo or Surround (Surround is anything not listed previously). Users can connect to their media via network (Ethernet or WiFi) or via USB ports to external USB drives. The 500GB of internal drive space allows users to take nearly 500GB of media on the road, just plug it in to any HDMI AVR or TV and you can play what’s stored internally. The Linux/Kodi install runs in a 512MB partition, my Kodi customisation and Artist Information (metadata and images) uses under 10GB, the rest free to use.
I started thinking this would be such a great way to get QQers into using a media player, I could offer prebuilt Intel NUCs with Kodi fully setup to guys here in AU, I’m not thinking about this for profit, I’d just cover my costs to buy parts and resell/ship. I found some 2nd hand Intel NUCs on eBay and have bought 8 (4 are going to family). I’ve bought new NVME 4.0 SSD 500GB (4000MB/s read, 2000MB/s write ), new power supplies and Bluetooth remotes. The cost was around $165 USD each. But I can get that down by buying NUCs from US. I picked up 6 this week for under $80 USD ea ex tax. 8GB ram, no disc or power supply. The ones I’d bought prior here in AU were over $129 USD, but did have power supplies.
The current predicted price for US residents: Less than $150 USD + shipping from NY + buyer buys a new power supply ($13.90 with shipping - ebay link provided)
Anyway, if you are still following me: I‘m thinking QQ members in North America would be interested, but it seems crazy for me to buy NUCs from US, pay shipping and GST tax to get them here in AU, then pay shipping and tax to send them back to the US. So I’d like to find a member in the US or Canada, that would be comfortable to clone an SSD from my disc image (LibreElec/Linux Kodi), install the SSD in the NUC and ship to members. it’s pretty easy if you’ve ever installed PC parts. Oh, also each NUC needs to have two firmware updates, one for the NUCs Intel chipset and one for its HDMI chipset. But that’s easy too. Anyone interested?
It can work two ways: I buy the parts and set the price, or you buy the parts and set your price. But I’m open to ideas, The goal is to get new QQers off their BD players on to media players. The future is now!
I’m sorry but since I’ll be funding the initial cost to purchase the NUCs and parts, I will only work with well known members here, no newbies. Sorry. (My US build/setuo partner, not members wanting to buy).
Maybe a member in UK or EU wants to join the assembly line too?
BTW: I will upload my new QQ skin mod when it’s ready for all Kodi users, and also the LibreElec (Linux) disc image too for those users with their own NUCs. Then users can buy their own hardware and do their own builds.
Thise members interested in buying a NUC setup like this can reply to this post now to register interest. I am currently trying to get Music Media Helper 9 finished and released, then I turn my attention to this project.
Some Kodi UI screen shots showing the UI included:
Main Startup Menu (The Artist Slideshow shows random Artist fan art, changing every few seconds) - Note the sub-menu nodes take you to 'filtered' Album lists (showing only your albums that are 'Atmos', 'Quad" etc (users can also customise this menu feature):
The Album lists look like this (as you scroll through the list, both album cover and background artist fanart change to the current list item) - In this list it only shows 'Surround' albums - Atmos, Quad, Upmixes or Stereo albums are excluded)
Selecting a track from an Album: Kodi auto plays next track until the album is finished, users can navigate to another album while playing. Stop/pause etc.
When playing an Album track, the Artist Slideshow rotates fan art images for the artist(s) tagged for that song, the disc art rotates and the tickertape at bottom shows the artist biography. The current fike codec/format data is shown on screen.
For any Artist you can access biography in detail or Album details from the remote control: Examples:
All this metadata above is scraped automatically from the web, or can be found in the metadata files that will be included on the NUCs and/or can edited by a user (simple xml text files). As you add new albums and/Artist Kodi can fetch additional data and images.
Here is an old video I did of a previous QQ skin mod I did of the Kodi Artist Slideshow when song is playing and you have a TV connected. The mod shows a codec logo at bottom of the info section, the latest version has smaller album art and fonts:
EDIT: For the techs in the crowd, here is the full NUC8 specs PDF: The NUCs in this project are all i3 3GHz/3.6GHz 2 Core 4 threads. Playing Kodi the CPU just idles along even when playing 4K video:
https://www.intel.com/content/dam/s...s/NUC8i3BE_NUC8i5BE_NUC8i7BE_TechProdSpec.pdf
--------------------------------------
IMPORTANT BUYER UPDATE:
We have decided not to buy the power supplies, ship them to NY (where we are building and testing) then pack and resend to you, it adds bulk and weight and will increase shipping fees to you.
We will reduce the final NUC price by $15 USD but you need to buy your own power supply.
This is the one on Ebay (free shipping $13.90):
https://www.ebay.com/itm/353845614239
Of course you can buy any other PS but our NUCs require: 19V 90W output and 5.5mm dc connector, beware some 19V 90W PS don’t have 5.5mm. You can get away with only 65W for i3 NUCs but Intel says 90W so that’s my recommendation.
I have opened Round 2 earlier today. We almost have enough member signing ups to confirm Round 2 will proceed.
These ‘Rounds’ are for US build, for North American residents, I still have NUCs available in Australia.
These are 2nd hand reburbished Intel NUCs with new NVME SSD drives (Fast!) and supplied with new Bluetooth remotes. These NUCs are in limited supply, they will become unavailable soon. So as a famous Aussie football coach once said: “Don’t think. Do!”
—————————————-
I’ve been tweaking my Kodi skin for surround music and improving navigation, album filtering etc, and now looking at building some new Intel NUCs for family members. I realise I can build and install a fully setup customised Kodi very quickly, I can clone a disc image onto a SSD drive and it’s ready to use. All a user needs to do is add their media file folder locations in the Kodi media library settings.
These NUCs play all surround audio formats (except DSD is via pcm), 4K HDR video, and will have dedicated customised UI for QQers and come complete with my collection of hundreds of surround artists biographies and thousands of fan art images etc. They can be controlled via a supplied Bluetooth remote, or via smartphone and tablet apps. They are 4" square and come in slim or high cases (high give room for a 2.5" internal hard drive):
| 
|
The NUCs run silently while playing music. When when turned on, the UI starts at the Music menu and allows viewing your albums by types: Atmos, Quad, Upmixes, Concerts (videos), Stereo or Surround (Surround is anything not listed previously). Users can connect to their media via network (Ethernet or WiFi) or via USB ports to external USB drives. The 500GB of internal drive space allows users to take nearly 500GB of media on the road, just plug it in to any HDMI AVR or TV and you can play what’s stored internally. The Linux/Kodi install runs in a 512MB partition, my Kodi customisation and Artist Information (metadata and images) uses under 10GB, the rest free to use.
I started thinking this would be such a great way to get QQers into using a media player, I could offer prebuilt Intel NUCs with Kodi fully setup to guys here in AU, I’m not thinking about this for profit, I’d just cover my costs to buy parts and resell/ship. I found some 2nd hand Intel NUCs on eBay and have bought 8 (4 are going to family). I’ve bought new NVME 4.0 SSD 500GB (4000MB/s read, 2000MB/s write ), new power supplies and Bluetooth remotes. The cost was around $165 USD each. But I can get that down by buying NUCs from US. I picked up 6 this week for under $80 USD ea ex tax. 8GB ram, no disc or power supply. The ones I’d bought prior here in AU were over $129 USD, but did have power supplies.
The current predicted price for US residents: Less than $150 USD + shipping from NY + buyer buys a new power supply ($13.90 with shipping - ebay link provided)
Anyway, if you are still following me: I‘m thinking QQ members in North America would be interested, but it seems crazy for me to buy NUCs from US, pay shipping and GST tax to get them here in AU, then pay shipping and tax to send them back to the US. So I’d like to find a member in the US or Canada, that would be comfortable to clone an SSD from my disc image (LibreElec/Linux Kodi), install the SSD in the NUC and ship to members. it’s pretty easy if you’ve ever installed PC parts. Oh, also each NUC needs to have two firmware updates, one for the NUCs Intel chipset and one for its HDMI chipset. But that’s easy too. Anyone interested?
It can work two ways: I buy the parts and set the price, or you buy the parts and set your price. But I’m open to ideas, The goal is to get new QQers off their BD players on to media players. The future is now!
I’m sorry but since I’ll be funding the initial cost to purchase the NUCs and parts, I will only work with well known members here, no newbies. Sorry. (My US build/setuo partner, not members wanting to buy).
Maybe a member in UK or EU wants to join the assembly line too?
BTW: I will upload my new QQ skin mod when it’s ready for all Kodi users, and also the LibreElec (Linux) disc image too for those users with their own NUCs. Then users can buy their own hardware and do their own builds.
Thise members interested in buying a NUC setup like this can reply to this post now to register interest. I am currently trying to get Music Media Helper 9 finished and released, then I turn my attention to this project.
Some Kodi UI screen shots showing the UI included:
Main Startup Menu (The Artist Slideshow shows random Artist fan art, changing every few seconds) - Note the sub-menu nodes take you to 'filtered' Album lists (showing only your albums that are 'Atmos', 'Quad" etc (users can also customise this menu feature):
The Album lists look like this (as you scroll through the list, both album cover and background artist fanart change to the current list item) - In this list it only shows 'Surround' albums - Atmos, Quad, Upmixes or Stereo albums are excluded)
Selecting a track from an Album: Kodi auto plays next track until the album is finished, users can navigate to another album while playing. Stop/pause etc.
When playing an Album track, the Artist Slideshow rotates fan art images for the artist(s) tagged for that song, the disc art rotates and the tickertape at bottom shows the artist biography. The current fike codec/format data is shown on screen.
For any Artist you can access biography in detail or Album details from the remote control: Examples:
All this metadata above is scraped automatically from the web, or can be found in the metadata files that will be included on the NUCs and/or can edited by a user (simple xml text files). As you add new albums and/Artist Kodi can fetch additional data and images.
Here is an old video I did of a previous QQ skin mod I did of the Kodi Artist Slideshow when song is playing and you have a TV connected. The mod shows a codec logo at bottom of the info section, the latest version has smaller album art and fonts:
EDIT: For the techs in the crowd, here is the full NUC8 specs PDF: The NUCs in this project are all i3 3GHz/3.6GHz 2 Core 4 threads. Playing Kodi the CPU just idles along even when playing 4K video:
https://www.intel.com/content/dam/s...s/NUC8i3BE_NUC8i5BE_NUC8i7BE_TechProdSpec.pdf
--------------------------------------
IMPORTANT BUYER UPDATE:
We have decided not to buy the power supplies, ship them to NY (where we are building and testing) then pack and resend to you, it adds bulk and weight and will increase shipping fees to you.
We will reduce the final NUC price by $15 USD but you need to buy your own power supply.
This is the one on Ebay (free shipping $13.90):
https://www.ebay.com/itm/353845614239
Of course you can buy any other PS but our NUCs require: 19V 90W output and 5.5mm dc connector, beware some 19V 90W PS don’t have 5.5mm. You can get away with only 65W for i3 NUCs but Intel says 90W so that’s my recommendation.
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