Creating your own Kodi build Part Five
Welcome to Creating your own Kodi build Part Five. This handy series will give you all the steps you need to make your own Kodi build.
Part One of this series can be found HERE
Part Two of this series can be found HERE
Part Three of this series can be found HERE
Part Four of this series can be found HERE
Having now set up the main menu items and some backgrounds, I thought it was time to “put some meat on the bones” in the form of some Add-ons.
I did a bit of investigation to see if there was any really quick way to do this but as it turned out it is not such an onerous task as I first thought!
The easiest way would be to start with someone else’s build who already had the Add-ons I liked and then simply set about personalizing it, but that seemed like cheating to me. I wanted to create the whole thing from scratch in order to learn and share that learning along the way, so here we go.
You will find many great Add-on guides on Bestforkodi.com so please take a look. Included in these guides are the instructions on how to install them, which I can assure you I will be using as we do this.
If anyone has any suggestions for Add-ons or would like to see me include any particular Add-ons, or just see them being installed, please let me know.
You can always contact me on Twitter @Grendel1905.
OK, some Add-ons come on their own but most are supplied within Repositories. I think of these Repositories (or Repos) as shops who supply the Add-ons for us, in most cases, free of charge. Some of them even have more than one level, sort of “shops within shops”.
So the best place to start is to load some of these Repos into our build so we can do some shopping!
I’m going to start with a few giants and take it from there. I won’t go through the installation of every Add-on but should do enough to get the idea. I can then do the rest without you lot watching!
I will do a few examples which show a mix of straightforward Add-on installing to the installation of large Repos.
Remember there are loads of great reviews and installation guides at Bestforkodi.com. If you can’t find the one you’re looking for just let us know.
OK, here we go.
Let’s start on the SETTINGS page and select FILE MANAGER.
From here, select Add Source. This can be a bit tricky on some systems and mine is one of them. To select Add Source on my system requires a “double click” and I don’t want to let you know how long that took me to find that out !!
Once here, we need to enter the path which will take our build to the correct location
in order to download our requirements.
Click on the box that says None
We can now enter the path required. In my case here it is http://xunitytalk.com/xfinity
The install guides on Bestforkodi.com will give you the this path information.
When you click on done, you then need to provide a name for this link on your device. Click the box at the bottom and enter a name. Here I called mine .xfinity. There is a reason for prefixing the name with a . (full stop) and that is by doing this it will be shown at the top of our screen in future. It’s not essential but a good tip that makes finding the link a bit easier once our system gets a bit “busier”.
Now when we hit OK, it takes us back to the File Manager page and we can see the link we just created at the top of the list. Magic !
Before taking this any further, I am going to add a few more links whilst I am here and it’s fresh in my memory how to do it.
Following the same process as above I entered the following.
Link and label for tvaddons.
Link and label for Legends
Link and label for Robocop
Link and label for Metalkettle
Now, back at the File Manager page it looks like this, with the five links all in place.
Now we have created the links for our system to go find what we want on the internet and install it, so let’s do it.
Back on the SETTINGS screen, select Add-ons and Install from zip file.
I will start with xfinity.
After clicking on the xfinity link, we get another menu, click on XunityTalk.Repository.zip and it will install. After a few seconds a message tells me it is installed and enabled.
Now repeat the above but for tvaddons.
Once inside click start-here
Then plugin.program.addoninstaller-1.2.5.zip.
And again we get a message to say it is done. In this case we have installed not a repository, but an Add-on that will make it easier for us to load more Add-ons as we want them. It’s called ADDON INSTALLER, we will take a look at it later, and it contains a lot of fantastic Add-ons.
However, not all Add-ons are inside this great tool so others still have to done in the old fashioned way! Always check out Bestforkodi.com for details.
Onto the next one now so click on Install from zip again and this time chose legends.
Once inside this one, you will see a few more Add-on choices, I want to load Moneysports so I click on plugin.video.Moneysports then the most recent zip file and let the magic happen.
There it is, all done
Getting the hang of it now, back to Install from zip and this time chose robocop.
Once inside, I can load just the Add-on or the repository, I chose to load the repository as this will make updates easier in the future.
Last one now, back to Install from zip file again and choose mkettle. This is a great place for some quality Add-ons but I am after a link to an alternative repository which contains an Add-on I use frequently and Metalkettle has it.
Once inside I will chose to install the Metalkettle repository.
Now I will go back inside and click on Recommended Repositories.
I now chose repository.dof21.zip and install it. This is the one that contains the Add-on I am after.
As you can see the options are never ending, there is so much choice available to us. We are all very lucky to have so many people working behind the scenes to bring us all of these options and we should always be grateful.
It really is now just a matter of choosing which ones to add into the build. That’s my next job. In the meantime I will just show you how to install a couple of Add-ons from the repositories we have installed. The shops are OPEN !!
Back to SYSTEM and Add-ons again and now this time click on Install from repository.
I will start off with Xunity, so click on it.
Now we can see all what is on offer from these guys in this repo already in categories.
I start in Program Add-ons
Again, plenty of choice, but what I am after is the great set of maintenance tools in here. Select Xunity Maintenance
And click on Install
Once again we get a message telling us it’s done.
Go back one step now and take a quick look in the Video Add-ons category and you will see a lot of great Add-ons including the superb Vdubt25.
Feel free now to take a look inside the repos we have loaded and see what’s available.
Inside the Video Add-on section of Metalkettles great repo you will find our very own Sparkys Football Highlights
Inside the dof21 repo you will find Sports Access. That’s the one I got from the recommended repositories from Metalkettle.
OK, one quick look at the Add-on installer tool we loaded earlier. This one is MASSIVE!
Go back to SETTINGS and Add-ons but this time click on My Add-ons. This is how we can run any of the Add-ons we have installed. Once inside click on All.
Now you will see a list of all of the current Add-ons in the build and it also tells us which ones are enabled already. Choose Addon Installer.
Then chose to Launch the Add-on.
Right now before we have any shortcuts, this is how to launch any Add-on we currently have.
Once inside here, the options are amazing, this is an Add-on and Repo SUPERSTORE.
Loading Add-ons could not be easier from here, just follow the on screen instructions, like this for F.U.B.A.R
Done!
Well, that is certainly enough to keep me busy for some time now as I embark upon loading up my build with the Add-ons I want.
One thing, it worth closing down kodi and opening up again frequently in between installations, this allows kodi to re-organise the file structure and tidy things up during the process.
Next time we will concentrate on setting up the Menus with shortcuts to our Add-ons before we get into some more advanced customization!
Thanks for reading Creating your Own Kodi build Part Five.
Definitely getting there now, hope you’re enjoying it. !
In the meantime, any questions please contact me on Twitter @Grendel1905 or @Bestforkodi
Keep dabbling
