HOW TO – Connect a Network Storage (NAS) Device to BEAMTV
The BEAM BW280 comes equipped with an Ethernet port to allow external network devices to be attached to it, either directly, or via a hub or switch.
By default, the network is configured on the subnet 192.168.99.0/24 and the address of the BW280 ethernet port is 192.168.99.1 and acts as a DHCP server which will issue IP addresses to devices attached to the network.
This allows for the connection of a Network Attached Storage device or devices to the BW280 onto which media can be stored and streamed from. The following steps explain how to configure a Synology NAS device and the BW280 to facilitate this set-up. The approach is same for other NAS models.
- Set up the file share and permissions on the NAS device
- Configure the network settings on the NAS device
- Configure the BeamTV OSMC operating system to mount the NAS drive at boot time
Set up File Share and Permissions
- Log into the Synology DiskStation web interface. If you don’t know the current address of your NAS then you can use the Synology Assistant tool to find it.
- If you don’t want to use your existing Shared Folder then create a new Shared Folder called “media”. Open the Control Panel and navigate to the Shared Folder option
– Click Create if you want to create a new shared folder, as per the following screen:
- Click on the Permissions tab to set up the user permissions, as per the following screens. This will apply even if you are using an existing Shared Folder.
- The Everyone user will need to have read / write permissions on the Shared Folder so that it’s accessible from BeamTV operating system
Configure NAS Device Network Settings
For compatibility with our optional pre-configured NAS setup, we recommend that the IP address of the NAS device be set to the static IP address 192.168.99.99.
1. Log into the Synology DiskStation web interface. If you don’t know the current address of your NAS then you can use the Synology Assistant tool to find it.
2. Open the Control Panel and navigate to the Network option.
– Enter your desired server name (this could be the vehicle ID for convenience)
– Check Manually configure DNS server option
– Enter Preferred DNS Server as 192.168.99.1
– Enter Alternative DNS Server as 208.67.222.222 or 8.8.8.8 (OpenDNS or Google)
– Click Apply to save the settings
3. Navigate to the Network Interface tab
– Click on the LAN entry
– Click Edit
– Enter the details as shown in the following screen:
– Click OK to close the Edit window
The network is now on the new settings. You may need to to reboot and/or connect to the device using the new IP address, or use the QuickConnect feature of the Synology DiskStation to access the unit.
Configure BeamTV OSMC Operating System (Kodi)
Unless your unit has been pre-configured for NAS operation, you will need to configure the Open Source Media Centre to mount the NAS file system at start up.
1. Connect to the BEAM BW280 using Beam Accessory Wi-Fi channel.
2. Access the BeamTV Media Centre terminal window using an SSH session (e.g. using PuTTY). Login details are available on a separate document, which can be obtained from our support team.
3. Edit the fstab configuration file using nano by entering the following command:
sudo nano /etc/fstab
4. Comment out the line starting /dev/sda1 as this the mount point for the build in solid state drive. Alternatively, if you want to keep it, you can change the mount name from /mnt to /mnt-ssd for example, or you can give the NAS mount point a different name. As long as the two are different, then they will co-exist.
5. Add the following new entry to the file:
192.168.99.99:/volume1/video /mnt nfs rw,bg 0 0
Essentially, we are mapping the local BeamTV operating system folder /mnt to the location of the Shared Folder on the NAS device. This location may be different if you have set up a different Shared Folder name or are using a different NAS.
6. When you new boot up the BeamTV Kodi system it should now be attached to the Shared Folder on the NAS device. You will need to refresh the library contents in the Kodi interface.
