The Weather

Some people like to know what the weather is in their location, maybe you have loved ones abroad and want to know what the weather is like where they are, in the below screencast I will show you how to setup Kodi to give you the latest weather feeds for anywhere in the world:

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Mobile Remote Configuration

I've covered controlling your Kodi device before, but that was only really practical on a Windows OS. Today's method should work across all platforms.

Resources

To complete this tutorial, you will need to own a Smart Phone, Due to the sheer amount of different phone builds across multiple platforms it would be pointless for me to do a tutorial on one app in particular. However I can make a recommendation, if you have and Android device of a high enough spec, you should definitely download and try out Yatse. Otherwise just do a search for Kodi Remote in your app store and you should find a couple. 

Different apps will need different ways of configuration, so check the App's page for installation instructions. 

Kodi Settings

You should have your smart phone ready at this point, but you may still have some empty fields, so keep an eye out during this process and you should be able to fill up the rest of those fields.

Ok, so open up Kodi, and head over to System, and then Services. Inside this menu change the Settings Level to Expert as shown below.

Go to remote control and enable the following options:

Then head up to Webserver and enable the option "Allow control Kodi via HTTP". You can setup a username and password too, otherwise anyone on your network can control your Kodi

Next we are going up to UPnP and we're going to allow the sharing of video and music libraries through UPnP. This will allow you to stream your media should you want to. You should also allow UPnP control here.

Now for the next step you will need Apple Bonjour installed if you are using Windows. 

Go to Zeroconf and activate the one option in there. That should allow you to auto discover Kodi on many remote control apps, but it will vary.

All that's left to do is configure your app, or hopefully you can just scan and find your device.

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Add-ons

Add-ons... Where do I start?
Add-ons very simply, increase the functionality of Kodi. There are loads of add-ons out there, with a wide range of variation. There are so many lists of people's favorite add-ons already online that it would be pointless for me to just make another list. So instead i'll show you how to install a single add-on, which should give you the tools to install more by yourself.

NetfliXBMC

This add-on will add Netflix to your Kodi environment, obviously that means that it will unlock a lot of content for you provided you have a Netflix subscription (or do the month's free trial). The best way to install an add-on is to install the repository that it belongs to. This way your add-ons will update automatically. To install the repository that netflix belongs to, we must go to the following page or download this file. Next open up Kodi, head over to System, then add-ons,  and install from zip file.

The file you just downloaded should be in your download directory in zip file still. Navigate to this directory and click ok on the Repository.alelec.zip file. The repository should now be installed.
A repository as you will soon see, is a collection of add-ons, they can be made by a single person so that they can keep their add-ons available, or they also are available in large groups, these are a great way of getting a flavour of the add-ons around the community.

Back at the menu, select "Get Add-ons". You will now see the repository that you just installed.

Go into this new repo, then video add-ons. You should now see NetfliXBMC.
Click on it, and click Install. Congrats! You just installed your first add-on!
To configure it, go to the home menu, then videos, then video add-ons. You should see NetfliXBMC here. On the windows OS, you will need to press 'C' and then click on Configure. There are lots of options in here that you can experiment with and work out how they work. However the main settings you should look at are the email and password options. Enter your Netflix credentials here.
Go back to video add-ons. Click on NetfliXBMC. There you go! You can now use Netflix in Kodi.

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Setting up controller support (Windows only) - Part 2

Yesterday I taught you how to prepare Kodi and download, install and setup file associations for Xpadder files. Today we will continue configuring a gamepad for Kodi.

So let's begin! Open up Xpadder and you should be greeted with the same screen that we left with yesterday. You need to have your controller inserted for this to work. Follow the on screen instructions, click the pad button on the left and click "New" from the drop down menu.
The menu you are greeted with will have 7 tabs below the image area, They should read as:

• Start - Basic Information
• Image - Add an image to your pad, this can make it easier to use Xpadder
• Images can be found here.
• Sticks - This is where you will setup any analogue sticks on your controller
• DPad - This is where the directional buttons will be setup
• Buttons - Almost of the rest of the buttons on your controller will be setup here.
• Triggers - If you have analogue trigger buttons (found on newer gamepads) setup is done here
• If your triggers are digital then they will be added as buttons instead

The easiest way to setup Xpadder is to follow the onscreen instructions. Simply move to a tab and enable it if needed. For sticks it will tell you to move your stick in directions, just do this. For buttons you just tap the button on the gamepad, and a grey square representative of that button will appear on screen. You should end up with grey squares on screen for every button. If you do and you've added a background image, you should end up with something similar to this:

To save this configuration, click the pad in the top left hand side, and select "Save As" in the drop down menu. 

Mapping

To map a button, you need to click on a button, where you will be greeted with this screen:

Click on the keyboard button that is wanted to be mapped to the specified button.

Kodi have made a configuration that is a great way to navigate through their system, I have done my best to emulate this configuration, so below I have listed the closest to this configuration that I could make with the keyboard shortcuts found here. 

Button	Shortcut
Dpad	Directional Buttons
Y	TAB
X	ESC
A	Enter
RB	Q
RT	PgDn
LB	Middle Mouse Button
LT	PgUp
Start	M
Select	Backspace
Right Stick Up	+
Right Stick Down	-
Rick Stick Click	I
Left Stick Left	Ctrl+Left
Left Stick Right	Ctrl+Right
Left Stick Up	L
Left Stick Down	T

Now that you have that done, open up Kodi and start using your controller, and have fun!

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Setting up controller support (Windows only) - Part 1

Recently, the team behind Kodi added controller support, however since this is in the very early stages, I will walk you through setting up any controllers supported by windows. Controllers can be a great way to navigate through Kodi, especially if you don't have a remote control to do this.

Ok, so to start we're going to need to turn on controller support in Kodi, to do this, you need to go to the Settings menu, and then head on down as far as System settings. Then go to Input Devices.

When in Input Devices enable to option shown below:

If you have a controller supported by Kodi, you should be finished and can navigate through Kodi already. The list of default options are shown in this picture from the Kodi team.

If you can't navigate yet, don't worry, keep reading.

Xpadder 

The easiest way I've found to configure an unsupported controller is with Xpadder. The version I've linked is an older, freeware version, if you wish to pay for the most recent version, you can do so here. Once you have downloaded that, run it, and it should extract all the necessary files to your download directory. If it doesn't do this, you may need to download and install 7-zip.

Once the contents have been extracted, navigate to the folder and run the program Xpadder.exe. As we are using an older version of Xpadder, you may need to run Xpadder in compatibility mode.
To do this, right click on the icon, click on the Compatibility tab and then tick the box as shown below. Open the drop-down menu and select Windows XP (Service Pack 3) and finally click Ok.

Run the program and click start, then click program location, and you should choose to associate the files on the final dialog box.

I don't want to make to make this post too long, so we'll call that a day for now, and move on to the mapping tomorrow!

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Skins

Skins

Today we will be looking at how to make that library all nice and shiny looking.
Skins can be useful for many reasons, they are fully customize-able, they allow you to unlock features that the standard "Confluence" skin has not implemented, they can allow an ease of access that is might not be present to some users with Confluence, and finally they can allow you to showcase all of the great artwork you should have setup in your library by now.

So let's begin, first of all you are going to need to navigate to the settings option, and then go into appearance settings. In this menu you will see an option that should say "Skin" and across from it, it should say the name of your current skin. Click this option and you should see a similar menu to the one shown below:

To get a new skin, you simply click the "Get More..." button shown in the top right hand corner.

You will then be greeted with a list of all the skins available.

To enable a skin, simply click on the skin you want, and then click install.

Kodi will download this skin for you and when complete will prompt you if you wish to use this skin. Click "Yes" when prompted

I have used the Arctic: Zephyr skin in the above picture, but to really know what's the best skin for you, you will need to try out as many as you can, and just see what feels right for you.

That's that then for today, I may publish a post of skin overviews or reviews in the future, but for now, you can always look around online for suggestions, or check out this showcase website.

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Setting up a Library

Downloading Kodi

Starting off, we're going to configure the default Kodi for you to use as you see fit. To do this you're going to need to download Kodi from here.

You should see a page similar to the one below. I will be working off of the Windows version, but you can use any of the provided operating systems, you should do some research to find the right operating system / device for you. 

File Sources

So by now, you should have Kodi installed, so run it and then we can get started. First off you're going to need to hover over videos, and then below that in the submenu you should see an item named "Files" like this:

Next we need to add a source for your videos, they should either be TV shows, or movies for this particular tutorial. You can find the naming file hierarchy conventions here.

To add a source, you need to click the "Add Videos" button seen below. 

You then need to find your source, to do this just navigate to the folder that contains your TV shows or Movies. Kodi supports many different means of accessing files over networks, this list can be found here.

Once you have located the folder that contains your media, hit the "OK" button on the right hand side of the screen. Give your source a name, like I have named mine below "Tv Shows", and then click the "OK" button at the bottom of the dialog box. 

Next you need to tell Kodi what is in your source, to do this you will need to navigate to either Tv Show or Movie, using the navigation bar located in the top right hand side of the dialog box. 

When you have selected the correct type of source, you can either change some settings for the source, or just click the "OK" button, most users will be able to just click "OK" though. 

You will be asked if you wish to update your library now, you should skip this for now, as I will show you how to update your library by yourself, whenever you want.

Now you have your first source completed, you can go through this process multiple times until all of your sources have been added.

The next post will be shorter, but will show you how to update your library manually, as well as going through smaller settings to help show off your library.

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