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

Baldrick

“How I didn’t got my Magic Mirror working on a Raspberry Pi 0 (zero) w”

tl;dr: My findings are that latest MM doesn't work on ARM 6 (Pi 0/1).

Hi all, I’m a Pi noob and I wanted to use my RPi 0w to put the magic in my mirror. I followed this guide but despite everything ‘apparently’ working, I only ever got a blank screen.

I followed this guide line by line (keeping same, out of date versions) I got warnings when installing MM but it installed however when Midori launched I only got a blank screen.
I followed this guide using Jessie lite but the latest l6 node version. Blank screen.
I tried on Stretch Lite with the latest l6 node… same problem. I even tried numerous browsers on Stretch as I read Midori had issues on Stretch. Blank screen.
I tested all the above by launching Midori with Google and that worked each time, the blank screen was only with MM.

I used SebTota’s image (link p9) and also had issues connecting to the internet. After bit of investigation I realised for me this wasn’t a WiFi issue (as others reported) but a Gateway issue even though it was set correctly in /etc/dhcpcd.conf

For those struggling with internet access, and if you can ping the LAN but not the internet, try this:

$ route -n

If the Gateway entry is 0.0.0.0 you have the same issue I did, correct it with:

$ sudo route add default gw 10.0.0.1

*(change the IP to your own router IP) then you should be able to reach the outside world.

This worked!!! However… SebTota’s image is now old and as soon as I connected to the internet, MM complains it’s out of date. As soon as you update MM, I got the same blank screen issue.

After hours of investigating and trying and trying again, I can only surmise that the issue is with the latest MM build
and that it’s just not designed for ARM6 architecture. It does however work just fine on my PRi 3B+ so there is definitely not an issue with MM!! It’s just a shame I can’t use the ultra small 0w to drive the mirror.

I’m no expert and this could be just me but I just thought I might share my findings in case it helps anyone else.

jpvalery

Hi,

Followed the instructions and could get it working neither with Midori nor Chromium.

I got error messages for chromium like this

bootstrap_helper: /usr/lib/chromium-browser/nacl_helper: Cannot open ELF file!  errno=2
[1:1:0509/144633.366460:ERROR:nacl_fork_delegate_linux.cc(315)] Bad NaCl helper startup ack (0 bytes)
[776:776:0509/144633.386035:ERROR:browser_main_loop.cc(495)] Failed to put Xlib into threaded mode.
[776:776:0509/144633.407424:ERROR:browser_main_loop.cc(272)] Gtk: cannot open display:

and i had also npm errors that I ignored

npm WARN package.json magicmirror-fonts@ No README data
npm ERR! Linux 4.9.35+
npm ERR! argv "/usr/local/bin/node" "/usr/local/bin/npm" "install" "--unsafe-perm"
npm ERR! node v4.2.1
npm ERR! npm  v2.14.7
npm ERR! code EPEERINVALID

npm ERR! peerinvalid The package stylelint@8.4.0 does not satisfy its siblings' peerDependencies requirements!
npm ERR! peerinvalid Peer stylelint-config-standard@18.2.0 wants stylelint@^8.3.0 || ^9.0.0
npm ERR! peerinvalid Peer grunt-stylelint@0.10.0 wants stylelint@^9.0.0

npm ERR! Please include the following file with any support request:
npm ERR!     /home/pi/MagicMirror/npm-debug.log

So I guess, as @Baldrick mentioned, that this is not working anymore :(

Will probably just get a R3B+ for that and keep the 0w for experiments.

E3V3A

@baldrick
After a fresh reboot and just after starting MM and getting a black screen.
Run with:
'cd $HOME/MagicMirror/installers/; pm2 flush && rm ~/.pm2/logs/mm-* ; pm2 start mm.sh

And make sure that your mm.sh reads:

cd ~/MagicMirror
DISPLAY=:0 npm start

Can you please (open a new issue on Github) and post the output of:

uname -a
dmesg -x -d -T
journalctl -b
sudo cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log
sudo cat /var/log/lightdm/lightdm.log
systemctl list-unit-files -t service -all
cat ~/.xsession-errors
cat ~/.pm2/logs/mm-error-0.log
cat ~/.pm2/logs/mm-out-0.log

janth

Hello :) since my Zero’s USB port is broken, I have to run everything from ssh and scripts.

I experienced the same as @Hawking: when starting midori, the screen would either turn black or white. I installed chromium and replaced the line “midori -e Fullscreen -a http://localhost:8080” by “chromium-browser --incognito --kiosk http://localhost:8080”. Chromium only shows a line at the top of the screen saying it can’t be run as sudo.

Any idea on how to fix this? Or how to get midori to work?

Thanks in advance :)

eviljin

Sorry for a stupid question, I’m all new to this.

When I ran the git clone command, I got this:

fatal: unable to access ‘https://github.com/MichMich/MagicMirror/’: server certificate verification failed. CAfile: /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt CRLfile: none

Am I missing something?

Thanks

Edit: NM, found the problem. Date/time on the pi was wrong.

NoNameRo

@janth said in How I got my Magic Mirror working on a Raspberry Pi 0 (zero):
Chromium only shows a line at the top of the screen saying it can’t be run as sudo.

Any idea on how to fix this? Or how to get midori to work?

Thanks in advance :)

add --no-sandbox
for example - chromium-browser --no-sandbox --disable-infobars --start-maximized --noerrdialogs --kiosk --incognito http://localhost:8080

janth

Thank you @NoNameRo !! It works now on Stretch. I can’t use localhost:8080 but xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:8080 works fine.

Since initd is replaced by systemd, how do I run a script at boot up? For the last couple of days, I’ve been using a solution using pm2, but it seems to run the “node serveronly/” process multiple times so that my pi’s cpu has been at 100 % all the time.

Where do I have to place the script with
cd ~/MagicMirror
node serveronly &
sleep 45
sudo xinit /home/pi/chromium_start.sh
and how do I activate it for boot up?

NoNameRo

@janth said in How I got my Magic Mirror working on a Raspberry Pi 0 (zero):

have them under /home /pi/

Auto Starting Chromium


sudo nano /home/pi/startChromium.sh

#!/bin/sh
unclutter &
xset -dpms # disable DPMS (Energy Star) features.
xset s off # disable screen saver
xset s noblank # don’t blank the video device
chromium-browser --no-sandbox --disable-infobars --start-maximized --noerrdialogs --kiosk --incognito http://localhost:8080

	Control + X > Y > Return

sudo chmod a+x /home/pi/startChromium.sh
	
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------	
	
Auto Starting Mirror


sudo nano /home/pi/startMirror.sh

#! /bin/bash
cd /home/pi/MagicMirror
node serveronly

	Control + X > Y > Return

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

sudo nano /etc/rc.local
	Add the following lines before exit 0:
/home/pi/startMirror.sh &
(/bin/sleep 30 && sudo xinit /home/pi/startChromium.sh) &

	Control + X > Y > Return
	
		sudo reboot

Lahim

@janth - thanks I also used pm2 but your way is better.

But I have other problem - I do not see right modules on the mirror. There is no problem from the local net.
I checked top_right and bottom_right - same result.
I moved clock module from top_left to top_right and it became invisible.
Any clue?

chilln

@jpvalery I did have the same problem with black and/or white screen as you had, it seems it was related to the old v4.xx version of nodejs.

Once i installed the newest armv6 version (at this time: https://nodejs.org/dist/v8.11.3/node-v8.11.3-linux-armv6l.tar.xz) it started working in Chromium but not in Midori. Good enough for me though.