I travel a lot and I like to take my media with me. However, I'm rarely end up at places with a strong internet connection and I don't like having to hook up my laptop to the TV. So a couple months ago I decided to build a portable media computer, and as a result, Mjölnir was born.

Mjölnir (so named because it looked like Thor's hammer before I painted it), is essentially a Raspberry Pi, a powered USB hub, and a portable HDD tucked inside an electronic enclosure.

The Raspberry Pi is great, especially when it's tucked away behind a monitor. However, it isn't perfect as a something to carry around with in your travels. To make it as small as possible the connections are all on different sides of the board. Plus, once you've found them all, you have to hook up the pi to a hub, the the hub back to the pi to power it, and then your portable HDD into the hub, then plug in power to the hub, HDMI into the pi, and ethernet. . . . on and on. And a crow's nest of wires does not look very good.

Mjölnir was born out of a need for simplicity. I wanted it to be just like a tiny computer, all the ports at the back, just plug things in and go.

If you follow these instructions you too can have a portable media computer for around $215.

POST NOTES:

Wow, the feedback and response to this has been incredible. Thank you to everyone that has viewed it and commented. I'm glad the majority of you like it. After recieving some feedback I'll try to clarify some points I failed to make in my instructable: