Installing on a Pi Zero

andyc7687

Hi everyone…

After lot’s of tinkering I finally got this to work on a Pi Zero W. I have answered a couple of people in the forum about this, so I thought I would put up a link to my github where I have put in each of the files I used.

Edit:
I have also tried making a single installer script for Pi Zero/2B/3B; if you have both platforms and the time to do it, please run bash -c "$(curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ac2799/MagicMirror/master/installers/raspberry.sh)" from the terminal and let me know how you get on… I have tested on the Pi Zero and it appears to work fine but advice or feedback still welcomed.

Edit2:
Here is a pdf guide for the process.

Some people reported difficulties when installing over SSH. The guide does tell you how to do it headless too (TL;DR: use SSH to enable VNC Server using raspi-config && download RealVNC Connect && connect headless using RealVNC Connect/VNC Viewer)

Andrew

yawns

Thank you. I did not test it as I do not own a Pi Zero, but it looks good. I pinned it to the top

aidandon

I can confirm this works. To run server cd MagicMirror then run command node server only.

Appreciate this work!

Ramez

great :raising_hands: i think your zero repository should be mentioned in the main MM readme

andyc7687

@ramez Thanks Ramez, I was hoping someone might say that; don’t know who is the contributors to the main repository. Happy for a link to be passed, or for my repo to be placed back in the MM repo.

andyc7687

@aidandon you will only need to cd MagicMirror and run node server only immediately after first install if you want it straight away. Otherwise when you reboot it will go automatically (after about a 1 minute or so wait)

idoodler

@andyc7687 Nice work. I think you should fork the MagicMirror repository, add merge your scripts with the installers/raspberry.sh script for direct implementation in the project.

andyc7687

@idoodler Thanks for that advice, I have forked the original MagicMirror repo, but no idea how to merge scripts on github…

idoodler

@andyc7687 You need to do the following:

Clone your forked repository to your local machine
Adopt installers/raspberry.sh to include your Raspberry Pi Zero specific code
Commit and push your changes to Github
Test it on a Raspberry Pi Zero by execute bash -c "$(curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ac2799/MagicMirror/master/installers/raspberry.sh)"
Create a Pull Request on the original MagicMirror repository

Just contact me if you need any help, I can also test your changes, I have a spare Raspberry Pi Zero W on hand.

andyc7687

@idoodler Great! I think I may have done it! I have tested most of it I think on a Pi Zero W and on a Pi 3B+; is anyone able to check whether any of my changes have affected usability on the Pi 3B and Pi 2 before I submit the pull request?

idoodler

@andyc7687 I am able to try it today, I will contact you again.

idoodler

@andyc7687 I just noticed, is this a server only installation?

andyc7687

@idoodler I didn’t really understand what was the difference between server only and not. This installs magic mirror, runs it as server only and runs three chromium browser on start-up to display it all… functionally I couldn’t tell the difference, but there might be something I’m missing

dazza120

Pi 3B+ can run the normal magic mirror load file no need to include it in the server only script, just means you need the full fat OS on the Pi

andyc7687

@dazza120 thanks, did you test my script? I was looking at a single installer that would auto detect 2B/3B Or Zero and install the appropriate script, thereby meaning a single repo for all platforms.

It’s able to detect 3B+ and Zero and does full install for 3B+ and server only for Zero, I don’t have a 3B though to make sure it works on that.

dazza120

@andyc7687 no mate I done a normal install from the magic mirror bash,I’ve done it twice as I was trying to make the install as light as possible so I was trying to use Stretch with just the basic but it wouldn’t have any of it so had to install the fat version and purge all the bloat ware but from what I’ve looked at so far doesn’t use that much more ram than the lite version, only thing I ended up doing was installing PM2 manually as for some reason it wouldn’t work from the bash after restart.

12wsx

after install on piZero (no W version) everything is ok but serveronly and browser does not start automatically. When I send from terminal:
cd ~/MagicMirror;
node serveronly
server start properly, In browser manually start localhost:8080 showing MagicMirror website properly. What m i missing?

andyc7687

@12wsx straight after installation did you restart the pi zero? It should run, it’s quite a slow start up process though… if you run pm2 show MagicMirror what does it say? It takes a good minute to fire up sometimes…

12wsx

Yes i have rebooted and wait about 10min and nothing.
pm2 show MagicMirror says:

root@raspberrypi:/home/pi/MagicMirror# pm2 show MagicMirror
[PM2] Spawning PM2 daemon with pm2_home=/root/.pm2
[PM2] PM2 Successfully daemonized
[PM2][WARN] MagicMirror doesn't exist
root@raspberrypi:/home/pi/MagicMirror#

:confused_face:

andyc7687

@12wsx Did you change the default user to be called root? I’m confused as to why your prompt says root@raspberrypi, but the home directory (/home/pi/MagicMirror) is that instead of /home/root/MagicMirror

As I remember, the shell script refers directly to a home drive using the user pi; if you wish to change this on your installation, issue:
EDIT: I just noticed I think you’re running off my installer rather than the forked magic mirror repository that I have been testing more recently. The edits are the same, except instead of being in ~/MagicMirror/installers it’ll be in ~/MagicMirror/PiZero, and the files won’t have Pi0 on the end of their names

sudo nano ~/MagicMirror/installers/startMagicMirror.sh

change the bottom line so instead of pi it is the correct user’s home drive e.g.

sh /home/root/MagicMirror/installers/chromium_startPi0.sh

Also check pm2_MagicMirrorPi0.json and chromium_startPi0.sh in case they also are pointing to the pi user folder.

then do

sudo chmod a+x ~/MagicMirror/installers/startMagicMirrorPi0.sh;
sudo chmod a+x ~/MagicMirror/installers/pm2_MagicMirrorPi0.json;
sudo chmod a+x ~/MagicMirror/installers/chromium_startPi0.sh;

to make all the files executable (just in case they aren’t already)

Now run:

sudo su -c "env PATH=$PATH:/usr/bin pm2 startup systemd -u pi --hp /home/pi"
pm2 start ~/MagicMirror/installers/pm2_MagicMirrorPi0.json
pm2 save

changing the /home/pi to ensure you are in the correct user.
Then restart and let me know what happens.

That’s the only thing that I can think it could be at the moment