Setting Up Kodi with USB and Google Drive
This guide will show you how to setup Kodi as your media center for your media. This will show you the following:
- Mounting your USB seedbox to Kodi as your Media source via FTP
- Setting Google Drive as a source
Take note that Kodi only does direct play. It does not transcode your mediamedia.
Prerequisites
- You must download and install Kodi to your devices. Visit the Kodi Downloads Page to learn more.
- The setup below is done on a Windows PC using Kodi 18.7.
- You must setup a FTP/SSH password on your slot. You must also know the path to where your media is. Refer to this link to learn more.
- Mount your Google Drive to your slot. You can refer to this link to learn more.
Setting Up Kodi
FTP
- This part of the guide sets the seedbox as your media source via FTP. In this case, we'll be adding our movies folder.
- Highlight Movies and click on Enter Files Section
- Click Add Videos. The Add video source appears. Click Browse.
- Click Add network location and add the following info. Click OK to save the remote location
Protocol: FTP Server
Server address: lwxxx.usbx.me
Remote Path: path/to/media/folder|auth=TLS&verifypeer=false
Port: 21
Username: {username}
Password: {set FTP password}
- Select the remote you just created and verify if you have the correct path. Once that's done click OK.
- Then add a name to your added path. In this guide, we'll be using USB_Movies
- A Set content window comes up. Since the path contains Movies, change the This directory contains dialogue to Movies.
- Select the information provider that you want. In this case, it's The Movie Database.
- Click OK. Kodi will scan your FTP location and add your Movies. This'll go to the Movies section.
Google Drive
- Install the Google Drive Plugin by going to Settings -> Add-ons -> Install from repository
- Scroll down then click on video add-ons and click on Google Drive.
- Finally, click Install. It'll ask for you to install other dependinces, click OK to proceed.
-
Go back to the Home screen -> Add-ons and select Google Drive
-
Click Add an account
- A window appears with instructions on how to connect your Google Drive account to Kodi. Either scan the QR code or visit the link and enter the code to connect.
-
Next, create a folder somewhere on your device that you can save exported GDrive
*.strm
files to.- In this example,
C:\Users\{username}\strm
is used
- In this example,
-
Reopen your Google Drive add-on and browse through your account
- Right click to the media folders you want to set. Right click it and select
export to .strm files...
- Set the destination folder to the folder you set, which in this case is
C:\Users\{username}\strm
- Enable Update library after export and Watch for changes in the Cloud folder then click OK. Let Kodi scan for all of the files in your Google Drive folders.
- Go back to Enter Files Section
- Click Add Videos. The Add video source appears. Click Browse then browse to where you created your folder, which should have the folders with .strm files.
- Select the folder you just created and verify if you have the correct path. Once that's done click OK.
- Then add a name to your added path. In this guide, we'll be using
TV
- A Set content window comes up. Since the path contains TV SHows, change the This directory contains dialogue to Movies.
- Select the information provider that you want. In this case, it's choose TVDB. You can select that from the Get More button.
- Click OK. Kodi will scan your Google Drive location and add your TV Shows. This'll go to the TV Shows section.