How to build an awesome WiFi hotspot airplane entertainment system for $105

What is this?

For just $105 you can build a wifi-hotspot entertainment system for your airplane. Your passengers can watch 100s of movies, music videos, TV shows right from their personal IPad or IPhone in flight. I have this set up in my plane, a Cirrus SR22. Each passenger decides what they want to watch.

How do my passengers set this up?

Tell them to install InFuse 3 (free app) onto their IPad or IPhone before the flight. In flight, they connect to a WIFI hotspot on your plane and watch movies in the Infuse 3 app.

(above) Infuse 3 IPad / iPhone app.

Where does the Wifi Hotspot come from?

It's created with alien technology, recently declassified in Area 51 vault. Kidding. It's created by a tiny device that is about same size and weight as a cell phone.

What to buy

1. Buy the Kingston Mobilite Wireless G2 Flash Reader ($50 on amazon).
2. Buy a 128GB or 256GB SD card. I use a 128GB and can fit over 100 movies on it.

How to set it up

1. Copy ripped movies on to the SD card using your laptop. 
2. Insert the SD card into the G2 reader and turn it on until the blue wifi light turns on.
3. Connect your IPAD to the wifi hotspot. 
4. Open the InFuse3 app.
5. Start watching movies!

Note, the G2 reader has a 12 hour battery, so it can also be use to charge phones. You can put a 12V USB charger into your plane and keep it charged this way in flight.

Is this legal?

I'm not an attorney so I don't know for sure. But my understanding is as long as you legally purchased the movies on DVD or Bluray, and copied them to the SD card, sharing them with your friends like this is legal.

Advanced Pro tips

Change the network name

You can install an Android App to administer your G2 reader. You can change the default network name to something cooler like SR22 SKYNET. Or you don't want to use the app, you can just connect to it via wifi on your ipad or laptop and go to a webserver it creates.

Professional names for your movie files

I use FileBot on my Mac to automatically rename all the filenames of the movies.

Download metadata

Infuse3 can automatically fetch movie metadata like the DVD art, description, etc. But you need to be internet connected.  Just connect your G2 Flash Reader to the internet and open the Infuse3 app. It takes a while, but eventually downloads all the metadata and stores it right on the SD card. So in flight it's already available.

To connect your reader to the internet either use a hard wired ethernet cable, or use the Kingston Mobilite Android or IOS app and connect it to your wifi

Directory setup

I use these directories

/New Releases/

/Comedy/

/Music Videos/

/Oscar Winers and Nominee Films/

And I like to flatten the files so I don't have /Comedy/Old School/Old School.avi. You can use this linux command to move files recursively into a new directory:

find . -name '*.m4v' -exec mv {} ./destination/ \;

find . -name '*.mkv' -exec mv {} ./destination/ \;

find . -name '*.mp4' -exec mv {} ./destination/ \;

find . -name '*.srt' -exec mv {} ./destination/ \;

Oscar Nominees and Winners collection

This is a list of all Oscar winners and nominees from last 4 years.

2014
12 years a slave
wolf of wall street
american hustle
nebraska
captain phillips
philomena
dallas bueyrs clubg
gravity
her

2013

argo
amour
beasts of the souther wild
django
les miserables
life of pi
lincoln
zero dark thirty
the master
flight
the impossible

2012
the artist
the tree of life
the descendants
hugo
midnight in paris
moneyball
war horse
the better life
the iron lady
beginners
my week with marylin
the help

2011
the king’s speech
127 hours
blackswan
inception
the kids are all right
social network
toy story 3
true grit
black swan
the fighter

2010
the hurt locker
a serious man
avatar
district 9
inglorious bastards
precious
the blind side
crazy heart
invictus
up in the air
the blind side