Installing on a Pi Zero

ebolisa

@sdetweil Thank you! Finally got it going. I had to change the SD card.

Now I can finally replace my P4 with the P0. The P4, along with the display, are causing heat related problems so, P0 to the rescue.

Just FYI, I cannot hide the cursor and sudo apt-get install unclutter didn’t help.

sdetweil

@ebolisa in css/main.css body should have cursor:none

you are running chromium-browser, not electron, but should have been the same

sdetweil

@ebolisa pi0 doesnt have a lot of power, so beware running too much…

check swap space usage

free -m

to see if it needs to be made bigger

ebolisa

@sdetweil Yes, I set swap to 1024. It’s slow but it works.
Thanks again!!

RushHour99

@sdetweil , I went through a fresh SD card install for a Pi Zero W. raspbian and then the raspberry.sh script via your github page. I believe everything completed without error.

However when Magic Mirror launches on reboot, I get a blank page indicating:

This site can’t be reached
localhost refused to connect

Any idea what to do to troubleshoot?

sdetweil

@rushhour99 is this with extra modules or just the base?

can u show the output of

pm2 logs --lines=100

RushHour99

@sdetweil said in Installing on a Pi Zero:

pm2 logs --lines=100

This just the Magic Mirror base. I haven’t added any extra modules.

Unfortunately I cannot paste the pm2 logs output. When I try it gets caught in some sort of spam filter and won’t let me post.

sdetweil

@rushhour99 u can email to me… same userid on gmail

also attach /home/pi/install.log

RushHour99

@sdetweil Thanks, error log emailed. Ive done this process before without error ~9 months ago. Maybe the rasbian version or magic mirror version has changed recently that is now causing the problem.

sdetweil

@rushhour99 there is a new MM version every 2 months…

I test on my own pi 0 .

haven’t seen a problem like this

sent email back, can u send install.log

sdetweil

@rushhour99 do this

sudo npm i -g npm@6

this will downgrade npm to v6

then

cd ~/MagicMirror
rm -rf node_modules
rm package-lock.json
npm install --only=prod

and check if the config.js file exists

ls ~/MagicMirror/config/config,js -laF

RushHour99

@sdetweil said in Installing on a Pi Zero:

sudo npm -i npm@6

I got an error. Thanks for helping out, this is a new build so I don’t mind if it gets messed up and I need to start over.

$ sudo npm -i npm@6
npm ERR! code ENOENT
npm ERR! syscall open
npm ERR! path /home/pi/package.json
npm ERR! errno -2
npm ERR! enoent ENOENT: no such file or directory, open ‘/home/pi/package.json’
npm ERR! enoent This is related to npm not being able to find a file.
npm ERR! enoent

npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR! /root/.npm/_logs/2021-08-03T22_48_17_691Z-debug.log

sdetweil

@rushhour99 typo, sorry

sudo npm i -g npm@6

RushHour99

@sdetweil Thanks!

I copied the config.js.sample to config.js before running the downgrade commands.

After downgrading and rebooting, the Magic Mirror showed up on my Pi 0 with the default configuration.

sdetweil

@rushhour99 great, thanks for the update

I pushed a change to the installer to prevent npm going to v7.

laurafox08

I recently purchased a pi0, and installed MagicMirror successfully. However when I go to install more modules, it starts to fail (ie. become very unstable). Other than just ‘upgrading’ to a Pi3/4, is there any reason why I couldn’t host the mirror on my website and just use the browser to display the data?

sdetweil

@laurafox08 said in Installing on a Pi Zero:

why I couldn’t host the mirror on my website

what do u mean?

this is a programmed app… its not just a web page.

did u increase the swap space… pi0 doesn’t have much memory…

and its under powered, so it can’t do everything that a pi3 or 4 could do…

laurafox08

@sdetweil sorry, my terminology isn’t great, this is my first experience doing much coding at all. I got it displaying the default modules, but it struggled to display my google calendar, and wouldn’t show background images at all. So I was wondering if instead of hosting locally on the pi, I could host it on my other computer and just call the data from there. The pi has no issue running Dakboard with background images, calendars etc, so I’m trying to see if I could run the MM in a similar fashion, as I like MM way better.

sdetweil

@laurafox08 sure, u install once, and can run full, server only or client only

client only really is browser to server.

so u can do what u want easily

the default install config assumes everything locally…

so, just change the config.js to allow any system on your network to connect

address:"0.0.0.0",

and initially disable any security filtering

ipWhitelist:[],

for pi0, my install script sets up chromium over server, as electron isn’t available pre built for armv6.

if u used my script see the run-start.sh script for the chromium command syntax
address:“0.0.0.0”,

sdetweil

see this
https://forum.magicmirror.builders/topic/15974/raspi-legacy-chromium-browser-broken-on-pi0w-armv6l-unable-to-install-magicmirror