Access Kodi USB HDD directories

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1

Hello all,

My MP3 collection has organically grown over the years and is rather messily labelled. For this reason it is hard to use libraries that expect everything to be neatly labelled. Using other systems, I have accessed my media through the directory structure which makes perfect sense to me and I can find everything with a few clicks.

Now I have this collection on an external USB drive hooked up to my Raspberry Pi, with Kodi Krypton. In Yatse 9.0.0, I can access this drive using the left tab - music and then choosing “albums” or “artists” (and some more options). At this spot in Kodi proper (i.e. not using a remote) there is also a “files” option which is absent on Yatse. I would like to use Yatse to navigate as before through the directories to play my media.

On the left tab I also found “Files”, then “audio files”, then the options database, playlists, UpnP and music. I would have expected to access the external USB drive here, however I can’t find it. the “music” option just seems to point to the /storage/music/ directory which I guess is located on the Pi’s SD card.

I can access the copy of my MP3 collection that I keep on my networked windows computer through “Upnp” (which I already find a very impressive feature of Yatse), however not the copy on the USB drive directly connected to the Pi (which should be much simpler).

Thanks in advance for anybody giving me pointers how to use Yatse to navigate the directories on the USB drive connected to the pi :slight_smile:

2

As the FAQ explains this is a Kodi bug / limitation about auto mounted devices.

You just need to add another music sources manually that points to where your external drive is mounted.

(Do not scrape it to avoid duplicates in Kodi after)

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3

Thanks so much for your quick reply :-), and sorry if I didn’ do my homework and missed that FAQ entry. I looked in the FAQ now and found this: “Kodi by default can show local folders and auto mounted folders inside the GUI, but JSON API is currently limited and can’t access those folders.
You just need to add a proper source inside Kodi so that it appears inside Yatse to bypass this Kodi limitation.”

Could you give me a pointer how I can add the source manually? Because my USB HDD does not appear when I choose add source and then browse. I guess I need to know the right syntax to enter the path, symbol by symbol…

4

The drive is mounted in a directory just add a source that point to the parent one. Usually on rpi it’s /media or /var/media.

Hard to tell more without being in front of the device and it’s more Kodi support :frowning:

Kodi wiki: https://kodi.wiki/view/Adding_music_to_the_library#Initial_Set_Source_.26_Scan

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5

Thanks again, you’ve been a great help. And you’re right, this seems to be a Kodi (not Yatse) issue…

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6

As 97% of the time :wink:

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