Syncing libraries between multiple Raspberries running OSMC

I’m frequently moving between two homes, I have a Raspberry 2 running OSMC set up in both these.

Now, I want to have my music and videos synced between these two devices but I don’t know how really to set such a thing up.

The inbuilt MySQL feature in Kodi only mentions syncing between devices on the same, local network so that won’t work. Unless the introduction page has that wrong. And as far as I understand it, MySQL don’t actually keep several copies on all connected devices but rather »stream« from a central device. That probably gives performance issues and I get no automatic backup security should the central device fail.

I looked into ownCloud, at first it looked immensely promising - albeit a bit complicated to set up - but I was soon disappointed. Files stored in a ownCloud server database is, as far as I’ve understood it, not accessible except for owncloud - so I couldn’t both share and use a file on a OSMC running a server. And the client doesn’t work with OSMC as it requires a proper desktop environment.

Now I’m looking into Tonido. There is a version to run a server on a Raspberry Pi with Raspbian or Raspbmc, but I haven’t been able to run that on OSMC. I might get it working, but even then I don’t know if I can share things between servers rather than just between a single server and several clients.

Any ideas on how to proceed?

here is a shoot in the dark but openvpn and mysql or a mysql with portforwarding something like that is what i would have tried.

I can VPN into my home network from my cell phone and access the MySql database and libraries. It somewhat works, high bandwidth videos can struggle… Depending on your bandwidth it may work for you. Only other option would be 2 separate libraries and some sort of sync going on between them

Found this on Kodi forum

http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=167893

might be worthwhile

Hope this helps // Toast

You could set up rsync over ssh between the locations. That way you’d have copies of the files in both places, and if you name your shares correctly, you could share the DB…

I have a similar situation. Two houses - i was actually carrying a hard-drive copy to the second house. But recently I converted to Emby server to manage the movies/tv/music data, and use Kodi (with the emby server add-in) as the front-end on Rasberry Pis. Now i just point the 2nd house Kodi toward my DynamicDNS external address for my Emby server in house 1. I do have FiOS at each house, and it streams beautifully. You just need to open up the Emby server port in you Home #1 router. And there are lots of other benefits to Emby server. Something to look into. Emby.media.

I have a similar issue as you. I have to travel a lot for work so what I do is bring a RPI2 with OSMC, and the Plex add on. My media center at home has Plex installed that the RPI2 automatically connects to and I can stream my media from anywhere with an internet connection.

@Boatguypat solution would be a good one if your upload speed limit is high enough to stream your video over the internet to the second home.

If that is not the case, sync both houses, I would recommend SyncThing to automatically sync your media files + Trakt.TV program add-on to keep your watched status (includes playback progress status) in sync. For me that would be the easiest solution with as little as impact as possible. Both houses will have their own library but using Trakt the watched status stays the same.

I’m trying out BitTorrent Sync now. Seems to work for my purposes. Thanks for the replies.