Raspberry Pi Zero W for Magic Mirror

[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

[funkdafied]

@sdetweil Thank you that did the trick. Only issue I see to be running into at the moment is Midori telling me it can’t find the page it is looking for.

[sdetweil]

@funkdafied ok,

when you run on a device that doesn’t have electron support, it doesn’t get installed via MM as expected…

then my install script changes the startup to use my run-start.sh script

which launches MagicMirror in server mode
and waits for the ready message

>>>   Ready to go! Please point your browser to: http://0.0.0.0:8080   <<<

and then launches midori like this (with whatever the port number is in the message)

midori http://localhost:8080 -e Fullscreen -e Navigationbar

just for grins can you do

cd ~/MagicMirror
npm start server

to see if that message appears

[sdetweil]

@funkdafied I think we solved this on discord

[Mayank Arora]

@sdetweil

I made a magic mirror in my college time using Raspberry pi 3b+

Integrated google assistant with youtube play also in it.

Now i am graduated and doing job from past 2 years, i am thinking to build one for my home.

Raspberry pi 4 and 5 are expensive, does raspberry pi zero works?

Will google assistant work on it? And youtube also will work on it?

If not youtube, will spotify work on it using pi zero

Which raspberry pi zero will you recommend me

[sdetweil]

@Mayank-Arora you need the pi0-2w at minimum and a fast sd card

The google assistant module is no longer available
Most of the MagicMirror modules for Spotify are display only,
You need the raspotify system service to play ON the PI
YouTube might work, but you have no voice control without GA

[roberto84]

Hi,

i’m new to magicmirror,but i’m not able to install it on my raspberry pi zero 2w.
What i did:
-Flashed sd with raspberry pi image, choosing the desktop 64 bit version of raspberry pi os
-Inserted sd to raspberry pi zero 2w
-Installed dphys-swapfile to increase swap to 1 gb
-rebooted raspberry pi zero 2w
-Without any apt-update, i just ran the raspberry.sh script from sdetweil repo here
https://github.com/sdetweil/MagicMirror_scripts

Unfortunately,it tooks lot of time installing dependencies,more or less 1 hour, this sometimes cause my wifi connection to drop also, due to high i/o.
Is this a normal scenario?could be this due to a bad sd card?
thanks!

[sdetweil]

@roberto84 I do not know. I just installed 64 bit on 02w last week. It is fragile due to the low memory and increased swapping

I can get the surf browser up, but it doesn’t update clock tick on seconds

So I think the 32bit image is the only choice, maybe back to legacy

[roberto84]

@sdetweil thanks for reply!
So at the end ,retrying several times,I was able to install everything with your script.
I installed pm2 also when asked,then I was able to see the default magic mirror display with calendar and so on.
Unfortunately this occurred only first time,then at first reboot ,I see from pm2 logs that everything starts,but what I obtain its only a black screen with no modules loaded…
Those are some error logs on ps2 when I run ps2 Magic mirror start

[4086:0104/075509.190939:ERROR:content/browser/network_service_instance_impl.cc:613] Network service crashed, restarting service.
[4086:0104/075554.525130:ERROR:content/browser/network_service_instance_impl.cc:613] Network service crashed, restarting service.
[1381:0104/082529.351804:ERROR:content/browser/network_service_instance_impl.cc:613] Network service crashed, restarting service.
[1381:0104/082634.504111:ERROR:content/browser/network_service_instance_impl.cc:613] Network service crashed, restarting service.

But at the end it starts as you can notice from out logs

[2026-01-04 08:24:33.145] [LOG] [app] Sockets connected & modules started …
[2026-01-04 08:24:39.175] [LOG] [electron] Launching application.
[2026-01-04 08:26:37.186] [INFO] [utils]

System Information

• SYSTEM: manufacturer: Raspberry Pi Foundation; model: Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W Rev 1.0; virtual: false; MM: 2.34.0
• OS: platform: linux; distro: Debian GNU/Linux; release: 13; arch: arm64; kernel: 6.12.47+rpt-rpi-v8
• VERSIONS: electron: 39.2.7; used node: 22.21.1; installed node: 22.21.1; npm: 10.9.4; pm2: 6.0.14
• ENV: XDG_SESSION_TYPE: tty; MM_CONFIG_FILE: undefined
  WAYLAND_DISPLAY: wayland-0; DISPLAY: undefined; ELECTRON_ENABLE_GPU: undefined
• RAM: total: 416.15 MB; free: 173.97 MB; used: 242.18 MB
• OTHERS: uptime: 4 minutes; timeZone: Europe/Rome

this is output of pm2 show MagicMirror

Divergent env variables from local env
┌────────────────┬────────────────────────────────────┐
│ PWD │ /home/pi │
│ SSH_CONNECTION │ 192.168.1.14 47702 192.168.1.27 22 │
│ TERM │ screen.xterm-256color │
│ SHLVL │ 3 │
│ XDG_SESSION_ID │ 16 │
│ SSH_CLIENT │ 192.168.1.14 47702 22 │
└────────────────┴────────────────────────────────────┘

Also ps2 status report MagicMirror online.
One important thing is that I can see MagicMirror contents correctly via the IP on Port 8080
What else can I try?
I also run your fixuppm.sh script ,but nothing changed.
Thanks in advance!

[sdetweil]

@roberto84

The fixuppm2 script just adds pm2 to start if you didn’t do it at install time

as I said it fragile.

I think you have to try using s smaller browser
Like surf

See the section of the readme at the bottom

But I think the only solution is going back to the 32 bit pi os image