How I got my Magic Mirror working on a Raspberry Pi 0 (zero)

Burner911

Thank you sooooo much for this guide! I spent the past weekend slaving through @evos posts as well, but unfortunately they are missing some key information. I managed to get Kweb running after digging through the Kweb manual, but it definitely wasn’t easy. I only had one problem left; executing the second script to run Kweb and it appears I also forgot to add sudo before xinit. Adding sudo should clear my issues up tonight.

Thank you again! Out of curiosity, have you found any modules that don’t work yet on the Pi Zero that work on the Pi 3?

EDIT: By the way, I got unclutter working by adding:

unclutter &

In the script I used to start the browser

Kobie

Great work Wieber. That’s a great guide. You saved me a lot of time.

I followed it step by step and noticed a few things missing, so here they are:

Step 6
git is not installed by default so you’ll need to install it first:

sudo apt-get install git

Then before running ‘sudo npm install’ you need to do this:

cd MagicMirror

Step 11
To use xset (for stopping the screen blanking) you first need to install the xset command:

sudo apt-get install x11-xserver-utils

start.sh should start with this line:

#!/bin/bash

chmod should be run with sudo:

sudo chmod a+x /home/pi/start.sh

Also…

Instead of adding start.sh to the end of .bashrc, it’s better practice to have the
script run automatically on start-up. To do this:

sudo mv /home/pi/start.sh /etc/init.d/startMagicMirror.sh
sudo update-rc.d startMagicMirror.sh defaults 100

This moves the script to the standard location for start-up scripts and tells the
system to run it after each boot.

I think if you do this, there’s no need to log in automatically (so you can skip step 10 above).

Kobie

Forgot to add:

Step 11
Instead of
sudo nano /home/pi/startMidori

it should read:
sudo nano /home/pi/startMidori.sh

And as Burner911 mentioned, insert

unclutter &

to midori.sh between the second last and last line.

Wieber

@Burner911 Sorry for the late reply!
Currently I have just a barebone MM running, it does the job and life is kinda busy atm so modules would have to wait for a bit. I think however that really most of the modules would work, since they’re mostly a part of the site that is running, which was never a problem for the Zero. The problem lies in the fact that MM runs with a browser setup that is not supported by the processor. But if you run into any, I would love to know!

Wieber

@Kobie Thanks for the reply!
My memories say Git worked out of the box, but my brains tells me that makes no sense since I usedJessie Lite, so it’s definitely worth editing the post (along with the other steps you mentioned, turns out that making a ‘guide’ from memory isn’t great ;) ), however I can’t edit the post anymore, maybe one of the moderators has a solution for this?

While we wait for that:
I HIGHLY RECOMMEND EVERYONE FOLLOWING THIS GUIDE TO READ BOTH @Burner911 AND @Kobie POSTS, IT MIGHT SAVE YOU SOME TIME YOU COULD SPEND IN FRONT OF YOUR FANCY MIRROR ;)

randombullet

This post is deleted!

randombullet

I’ve been working on this for a little bit and I’m sorry for all the incoming questions and posts on here.

On sudo npm install, I get npm ERR! code EPEERINVALID.

I’ve tried googling some answers but I’m not confident enough to figure this out. Also I’m writing the steps in a more linear way to make more sense of it this is what I have so far and I’d like some input so that I can help other people.

Step 2
My Jessie Lite didn’t allow me to create files for some reason. I posted on reddit here.

Anyways the way of going around this is to put in a “wpa_supplicant.conf” file into your SD card and put the following in:

network={
	ssid=”YOUR_WIFI”
	psk=”WIFI_PASSWORD”
}

This is what I have so far. Please look over this. Thanks in advanced!

1 sudo wget http://node-arm.herokuapp.com/node_latest_armhf.deb
2 sudo dpkg -i node_latest_armhf.deb
3 sudo apt-get install npm
4 sudo apt-get install git
5 cd /home/pi/
6 git clone https://github.com/MichMich/MagicMirror
7 cd MagicMirror
8 sudo npm install #This will take a LONG time.
9 sudo apt-get install midori
10 sudo apt-get install unclutter
11 sudo aptitude install xinit
12 sudo apt-get install matchbox
13 sudo raspi-config
14 Boot Options -> B1 Desktop/CLI -> B2 Console Autologin
15 sudo nano /home/pi/start.sh

#! /bin/bash
cd ~/MagicMirror
node serveronly &
sleep 45
sudo xinit /home/pi/startMidori.sh

16 Control + x > Y > Return
17 sudo chmod a+x /home/pi/start.sh
18 sudo mv /home/pi/start.sh /etc/init.d/startMagicMirror.sh
19 sudo update-rc.d startMagicMirror.sh defaults 100
20 sudo apt-get install x11-xserver-utils
21 sudo nano /home/pi/startMidori.sh

#!/bin/sh
xset -dpms # disable DPMS (Energy Star) features.
xset s off # disable screen saver
xset s noblank # don’t blank the video device
matchbox-window-manager &
unclutter &
midori -e Fullscreen -a http://localhost:8080

22 Control + x > Y > Return
23 sudo nano /boot/config.txt

disable_overscan=1
framebuffer_width=1050
framebuffer_height=1680
framebuffer_depth=32
framebuffer_ignore_alpha=1
hdmi_pixel_encoding=1
hdmi_group=2
display_rotate=1

24 Control + x > Y > Return

Burner911

@Wieber @Kobie

Thank you for your help! Have you had any luck scheduling your monitor to turn on and off? I can’t get mine to work with the scheduler module.

Kobie

@randombullet I got error when installing npm too, but can’t recall what they were. I just ignored them and everything works fine anyway. Try starting it up and see what happens.

@Burner911 No sorry, I haven’t try that module, but as far as I’m aware running on a Zero should impact the modules at all so it could be a separate issue.

Burner911

@Kobie I’m worried it may be something with the limited processing power of the Pi. Since the scheduler relies on the remote module as well I double checked the remote module by trying to connect remotely from my phone, but the webpage would just hang. This may be an unrelated issue, but I’ll look into it more.

When I shut down my mirror manually I see my email module is throwing errors in the background too so maybe that is drawing too many resources as well? Hard to say, I’ll report back if I find a solution.