Raspberry Pi Zero W for Magic Mirror

davidgagne

How to Get MagicMirror to Run on a Raspberry Pi Zero W Rev 1.1

Late-May 2024

Huge thanks to @sdetweil for all his help!

Flash card with Legacy 32-bit.

Connect via ssh to run script:

bash -c  "$(curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sdetweil/MagicMirror_scripts/master/raspberry.sh)"

Answer yes to disable screen saver and use pm2 questions.

Remove chromium with:

sudo apt-get remove chromium-browser
sudo apt autoremove

Add Firefox with:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install firefox-esr

Enable VNC using GUI (Interface Options):
sudo raspi-config
Connect via TigerVNC (Apple app)
Edit installers/mm.sh via VNC using Pi's baked-in text editor by adding:
```
cd ~/MagicMirror
export external_browser=firefox
DISPLAY=:0 npm start
```

Execute fix'em-up script:

bash -c "$(curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sdetweil/MagicMirror_scripts/master/fixuppm2.sh)"

cd ~/MagicMirror/
pm2 start MagicMirror

sudo reboot

Note: On my Pi Zero W it takes a solid ten minutes from reboot to actually seeing MM output via HDMI.

sdetweil

@davidgagne thanks.

5 and 6 are optional
as 7 can be done with nano over ssh

   scroll down with keyboard arrow keys
   hit enter to add a line
   type the export line
   ctrl-x to exit nano, yes to save contents

8 and 9 over ssh
9 pm2 can be run from any folder location

davidgagne

@sdetweil Is there any reason why this same procedure would not work on a 3B+? I’ve tried with multiple different versions of the OS but it always seems to get stuck on “Updating packages …” and – as far as I can tell – there’s nothing meaningful in install.log. Is this install script unique to the Zero W?

sdetweil

@davidgagne no. the script works of any Debian based os. pi0 is SLOOOOOW…
but pi 3b+ should be ok. there should be a moving <-> while it’s updating… (haven’t figured out how to make that stand out more)

the script is doing apt get update, apt upgrade . this could take a while based on how much change since distro was released. over wifi, nothing I can do to speed it up.

I’ve tested on all the pi models. except the pi 1.
on odroid, Jetson nano, a chrome box and book running linux and a bunch of x86 distros., and macos Intel and arm.
I also tested on my arm chromebook, with the extra Ubuntu installed. install worked and server mode worked. no ui

if there is a problem, I’ll fix it. I’ll setup my 3b later.

davidgagne

@sdetweil Right. That’s my confusion. I have been able to run the script a dozen (or more) times on the Zero W, but it always fails on the 3B+, which I had assumed would be faster / better than the Zero W.

sdetweil

@davidgagne always fails?

what os? I’d pick the 32 it due to memory size

send me the install.log.

capedbuffethero

@davidgagne Wow, your summary above is just amazing! This is exactly what I was looking for.

Can you comment on why the choice of legacy OS was selected? Is there some kind of tradeoff that is being made here?

sdetweil

@capedbuffethero the pi0 is older armv6l processor, it can only run 32 bit mode. the memory is small on pi0,

everything that doesn’t fit in memory causes swapping, to the sd card. pi0 has the older slower sd chip.

so, use the legacy 32 bit image to reduce the footprint

davidgagne

@capedbuffethero Thanks! Please upvote if you found it valuable. I’m fairly new here and trying to improve my rep so all my posts aren’t held for moderation. :)

capedbuffethero

@davidgagne It appears I need 1 reputation to upvote.

sdetweil

@capedbuffethero really? I’ll check on that. didn’t used to be.

sdetweil

@capedbuffethero can you try this again… we should have reset this option to 0
downvote still requires rep of 1 or above…

plainbroke

@davidgagne
Does it matter that you install firefox-esr
but in the mm.sh script you just call it firefox ?
I went to midori to get mine to work it would not recognize the firefox in mm.sh for some reason.

sdetweil

@plainbroke the package is called firefox-esr

the program name is firefox
it must be on the path for mm.sh to execute it.
I don’t know if installing the package does that.
I don’t remember worrying about it

the command

which firefox
should return the full path to the executable if it’s on the path.
otherwise you can add its folder onto the path in the .profile or .bashrc scripts
that setup the shell environment

capedbuffethero

@davidgagne said in Raspberry Pi Zero W for Magic Mirror:

Summary

when running DISPLAY=:0 npm start I got an unexpected error
follow up question: export external_browser=firefox doesn’t this export vanish as soon as my session ends? Do I have to do this every time?
firefox is started and is visible on VNC
firefox is not able to connect to the node server (I guess the node server is not running)

Details:
When executing this script:

cd ~/MagicMirror
export external_browser=firefox
DISPLAY=:0 npm start

on this step: I get this output:

myname@raspberrypi:~ $ cd ~/MagicMirror
myname@raspberrypi:~/MagicMirror $ export external_browser=firefox
myname@raspberrypi:~/MagicMirror $ DISPLAY=:0 npm start

> magicmirror@2.27.0 start
> ./run-start.sh $1

./run-start.sh: line 79:  8050 Killed                  node serveronly

these are the lines that precede line 79:

    # if user explicitly configured to run server only (no ui local)
    # OR there is no xwindows running, so no support for browser graphics
    if [ "$serveronly." == "$true." ] || [ "$xorg." == "." -a $mac != 'Darwin' -a "$wait_for_x." != "." ]; then
      # start server mode,
      node serveronly
    else
      # start the server in the background
      # wait for server to be ready
      # need bash for this
      exec 3< <(node serveronly)

if we do export external_browser doesn’t that vanish as soon as the RPI is rebooted or if my session ends?

after a while the VNC client showed firefox start, but no URL, then the screen went white, then Firefox said “Unable to connect”

then I ran this script, I am tailing logs. What does “fix 'em up” script do

Execute fix'em-up script:

bash -c "$(curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sdetweil/MagicMirror_scripts/master/fixuppm2.sh)"

the last line is this: pm2 setup completed - Fri Jun 14 21:52:48 PDT 2024

cancelling the step DISPLAY=:0 npm start allows me to rerun this step, but the step always ends in failure.

UPDATE: “Unable to connect” is because Firefox cannot connect to the node server. VNC can connect without issue! The error is actually an error from the Firefox browser.

sdetweil

@capedbuffethero
the export is used on the MagicMirror system side. it is paired with the
node server execution, which launches MagicMirror without a ui.
then when the server is running, run-start.sh launches a browser to connect to the server

the export has nothing to do with vnc,
it is just used to tell run-start.sh which browser to launch. (on linux, env variables are NOT passed to children processes by default. you have to use the export keyword to enable it, for each env var you want to pass)

if you set the MagicMirror config.js.js to

address:"0.0.0.0",
ipWhitelist:[],

then you can use a browser on your phone, Windows, Linux, or Mac system to view MagicMirror directly without vnc

the killed message is because you restarted MagicMirror, and run-start.sh found the server instance running already. so it must be stopped and restarted in case you changed the config

funkdafied

Hello all giving MM a try again on a Rpi zero and have been trying to run the script in this thread but keeping getting the following message

Am I missing something to by pass the Xorg check?

OS
achild@raspberrypi:~ $ cat /etc/os-release
PRETTY_NAME=“Raspbian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm)”
NAME=“Raspbian GNU/Linux”
VERSION_ID=“12”
VERSION=“12 (bookworm)”
VERSION_CODENAME=bookworm
ID=raspbian
ID_LIKE=debian
HOME_URL=“http://www.raspbian.org/”
SUPPORT_URL=“http://www.raspbian.org/RaspbianForums”

sdetweil

@funkdafied I have just pushed a fix for that… (was a test for text mode or graphical mode)
(and I see I have to expand the test for the Bookworm compositor too,edit: just fixed that too)

but it won’t help in your situation…

you cannot run MagicMirror on bookworm successfully on a pi0-w, armv6l
takes too much memory

you need to use the legacy 32 bit image (bullseye)

funkdafied

@sdetweil thank you that worked to a point please have a look at the below with the errors I getting:

sdetweil

@funkdafied I cannot recreate this…

try this to increase the timeout


You can extend timeout with those two commands:

npm config set fetch-retry-maxtimeout 6000000
npm config set fetch-retry-mintimeout 1000000
enter image description here

Source: https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/v9/using-npm/config#fetch-retry-maxtimeout