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.

[randombullet]

@Kobie So even after I did all of my steps and there were no error I rebooted and came back to the terminal screen. I midori apparently didn’t launch. Also, after I did

sudo cp config/config.js.sample config/config.js

I was presented with a blank document. Is it supposed to have anything?

[Kobie]

@randombullet I’m afraid I don’t think I can help much. I simply followed all the steps above and it worked for me. Perhaps you missed a step, but it would be hard to say what. Perhaps the easiest thing to do is to re-flash the jessi-lite image and go through the steps again :(

[bhepler]

@randombullet I think your problem is with the sudo command. You shouldn’t need sudo to copy the config.js file. Check the permissions on the the config.js file. Make sure the npm process can read it.

[Burner911]

@Kobie @Wieber Good news! Found out my mail module wasn’t connecting properly with my 2-step verification enabled. After switching to a “less secure app password” my mail app loaded correctly and no longer continued to stall and chew up resources in the background. As a result I was able to remotely connect once again and the scheduler works!

[SebTota]

I followed all your steps… took me 4 tries to actually succeed (my very first Pi project ever)… but i get an error. It boots into MagicMirror2 but it says "please create a config file. See README for more information. " I went on GitHub and read the README file but no matter what i type in i cant find the config file. Please help me out. Huge thanks!!!

[Wieber]

@SebTota Your MM2 is actually working, so you did not mess up :D
You just have to configure your MM in order to boot it properly. If you go to the /MagicMirror/Config/config.js.sample file you can add all the information your mirror needs (e.g. a link to a weather api, an RSS feed for news etc) you can safe the file with ‘crtl+x’, then change the file name to config.js (just remove the ‘.sample’ bit) and press ‘y’ (this is of the top of my head, but i’m sure you can figure it out, you just have to safe the file under a different file) and reboot!

You don’t actually have to put in your personal edits (weather, calendar etc) for it to boot normally, it just needs an ‘config.js’ file for it to stop showing the message.

Good luck!

[Wieber]

@Burner911 Great to hear it’s all working now :D

[SebTota]

What the heck!! I got the error message. Reset the pi. Got the message again. Gave up, then when i saw you comment I said id give it another try. I boot it up and it works. I dont know if you have some magical powers your not telling anyone about, but man I love you right now.

[Wieber]

@SebTota I might have received a letter from Hogwarts once, but I would have to kill you if I told you ;)
Have fun with your mirror!

[SebTota]

@Wieber Not to bother you much more but i still have one more question. When i try to access the MM like you said to change the config file i get an error.

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ /MagicMirror/Config/config.js.sample
-bash: /MagicMirror/Config/config.js.sample: No such file or directory

any idea?