I read these replies a while back and I want to re-ask the question but with more detailed specs. I looked at @sdetweil comments about mini-PC’s and while Amazon is not necessarily reflective of what is out in the market, the mini-PC’s advertised on Amazon using the search term mini-PC are pretty pricy.
I don’t know enough about Linux to know whether this business with Wayland was or is a Raspberry Pi thing or a Linux thing but it did make me wonder whether using just Pi OS AND Pi SBC’s can be a trap.

I can buy Pi 4’s that will run MM all day long for around $50.00 or thereabouts but are there other brand SBC’s out there that will run MM or can install a desktop environment OS.

MM’s make popular gifts that can be tailored to a specific user.

@plybz18 Nice. That is a pretty slick setup.

@plainbroke I have been looking into expanding my horizons but I have a question that have not really seen discussed.
When I think PC, I think machine that you (the owner) is going to do multiple tasks with whether that is play high end games on at one end of the spectrum and a cheap laptop you can take traveling, check email, do some powerpoints on and do business related word processing stuff which is kind of where Windows roots lie.

Flip side is Pi’s and Pi-like devices that in my case is running things like Pi-hole, MM, Raspberry Shake (earthquake detection, GPIO stuff but all are 1 SBC doing one thing.

Do people do multi-tasking on SBC’s in general? Since this question is about Home Assistant, are people using Mini-PC’s and running HA and browing the internet, email, and light duty stuff that one would do on a middle of the road PC or laptop
Why should I by a Nuc instead of a base model Pi5 or other Linux based SBC to Run HA.

I’ve been eyeballing a LattePanda IOTA but I also already have a PC that doesn’t complain when I run Fusion or GIMP.
I have priced some of these mini-PC’s and they can get quite pricey

@sdetweil I pulled to a stop on finishing this particular MM to make sure it was not something that I did incorrectly or something that could be resolved by me just changing a setting or something along those lines but after picking at it on and off for a few days that does not appear to be the case.

As of right now I feel like I can work around the problem, but is it something that is going to have to be resolved by yourself and the other maintainers?
Just my nature to poke at problems like this to better understand. There is very little information out there and mostly what is out there seems to be of minimal technical value. Sort of “We rolled out Wayland, enjoy” or “Raspberry Pi rolled out Wayland, enjoy” repeated in a hundred different locations.

Related to the above, how do I determine the MM version? I have a MM, the first one I built that I felt really good about, and it has been chugging along just fine for a few years now. I know it needs updating but I have been reticent about doing that update because of this issue ever since Wayland was initially rolled out by Raspberry Pi. Sort of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

@sdetweil Am I right in that these problems are tied to this Wayland/labwc change?
Just looking at how MM appears when it goes from fullscreen to “not fullscreen” is what prompts my question.

@sdetweil Thanks a bunch, this project gets more and more appealing the more I read.
I really appreciate the link about resetting Hue bulbs. Is that persons channel a good source in general or that video is good but channel less so?

I have not watched the entire video yet but in the beginning the guy makes a point about how he has the Sonoff device on an extension cord but it sounds like “Line of Sight” is something I need to be more conscious of with Zigbee compared to normal wi-fi?

Is that accurate? I pay attention to that already but that is something to be aware of with the Zigbee network?

@sdetweil So my only option is to do Ctrl+Sft+I to get Developer tools up?

The ALT key is the bane of my MM existence.

I have an exceptionally old version of MM running and if I hit the ALT key by itself it toggles me out of fullscreen mode and offers me the option of launching developer tools which I use occasionally. Tap ALT key–> click View–> get dropdown —>Click Toggle Developer Tools and I’m off to the races.

One my latest install of MM, ALT by itself does nothing, searched forum and saw something about ALT + Spacebar, so I have tried that and can get myself out of fullscreen by way of this free floating option list. I do not get the selections across the top of the screen, one of which is view.
I can get MM out of fullscreen but here is what I get. The image shown here is the result of clicking Fullscreen when it is in Fullscreen so that will toggle in both directions .
After poking around in Chromium it looks like Ctrl+Shift+I will open developer Tools but
Any suggestions?

@sdetweil I’ve had to go in on my last two installs and reenter the locale stuff. I know you are not a fan of the old VNC option which Pi has built their own and brought screen sharing in-house with Connect but is a challenge to get up and running. I had to go into raspi-config to enable it. I’ve gotten it going on my my recent installs but not without fumbling around some to get there.
I think the warning one gets about using user Pi and that I should change it is overkill.

Connect, if I remember you can enable in the configuration before you actually write the image to the sd card but nope.
Last install I skipped over enabling Connect in the pre-configuration and did it in Raspi-config.
Notice this screen shot and Control Centre vs raspi-config . So enabling Connect and Locale were where I had problems.

@sdetweil Having installed the latest greatest Pi OS version, it is a lot more complicated process and some of it does not work.
Some of the items they do prior to writing to the sd card I have had to go into raspi-config to set. So doing the same configuration step twice is not good.
I suppose they are trying to capture a portion of the market they did not have before.
The curse of going public. Quarterly earnings.
I just looked at their ticker for the first time ever and not a stock I would ever buy .

@sdetweil You are running Home Assistant on a Pi? Any benefit to using a pI 4 vs Pi 5? Pi’s I have on hand so no problem there. I took a glance at the setup and it makes reference to needing an SD card but can I use one of the M.2 hats I have to run off.

If I have the Pi already, my first purchase would be along the lines of one of the Sonoff devices like you have listed and also any end devices like a smart plug to turn a lamp on (for example). The Hue hub becoming a paperweight (which is fine)?

I just want make sure that the WILL need you are referring to are the Sonoff devices? The Sonoff E and MG24 are inexpensive. Any hardware things you would do over or differently in hindsight. While money does not grow on trees I could cover more than the cost of those devices you listed if it provided a tangible benefit to the system.
I had not ever heard of resetting of the Philips bulbs. Is there something out on the interwebs that describes that process? The ability to do a reset to my existing Philips Hue bulbs just made this project way more appealing.
This apartment is not big but I sometimes think there like 4’ x 8’ sheets of shielding in the walls because of the low wifi signal strength of devices thaat do not have a direct line of sight to my router so I need to deal with that in my choice of hardware.

Everything I have ever built I always have some amount of "If I could do this over again, I would do X instead of Y when the project was completed. Any things you would do differently today if you were starting from scratch?

This may not be the correct location for this post but is my best guess.

Over the length of time I have been tinkering with the Raspberry Pi and Magic Mirror combination I have seen a lot of folks using the combination as part of a smart home setup.

A good while back I set up a basic Philips Hue system that includes a Philips Hub, that was all the lights in my home. I live in a single bedroom apartment so I’m sort of restricted in what I can and can’t do. A device that plugs into a wall socket is okay, replacing the wall socket with a smart device, not okay. I wear cochlear implants and am entirely deaf without them. So I turn the lights on at full brightness in my bedroom so the Hue system is my alarm clock.

A few months ago, one of the Philips bulbs went dead on me and needed to be replaced. I took the opportunity to see what BRANDS were compatible and it appears that Philips Hue is a proprietary system so none of the other bulbs that are now in the marketplace are compatible. The Philips bulb was $50⁰⁰ which…NO!

This month a little balloon popped up asking me to sign in, which I ignored. Last week, Philips locked me out of the app entirely which was that final straw.
As a practical matter, since I do use decent security around my computer/internet connected hardware I have way more of a problem with my data being sold back and forth by legitimate businesses than hacking by crooks.

What smart home hardware is least intrusive, most open source and most compatible with a wide range of brands. Fifty bucks for a lightbulb and capturing my data is unacceptable to me so would be interested in what brands and hardware would people recommend? Any thoughts on Home Assistant and their most recent Home Assistant Green device?

@sdetweil The comments directly above by @karsten13 about some changes done are above my pay grade but I worry that in the quest to “make things better” RaspberryPi will build themselves right out of the niche Pi’s were created for.

@sdetweil Sorry for the ultra-slow reply. I think this was a stumble at Raspberry Pi
I had 3 separate Raspberry Pi 4B’s that I needed to do some tweaking on over the course of the last 2 - 3 weeks.
Want to note that I have an app I use to delete partitions, format drives in any of the formats out there FAT,NTFS etc. I’ve used it forever but just want to mention I use that tool rather than the format tool in Windows.

So, the first Pi4 was one set up to run Pi-Hole. I messed it up somehow but net result was I started over formatted SD card, used Pi Imager, chose the Pi 4 64 bit Pi OS and loaded Pi OS on this Pi4. No problems whatsoever. It was unknown to me at the time but an update to the Raspberry Pi Imager was right around the corner. The imager application GUI was slightly different but the OS install went just fine.

A few days later I went to tackle Pi 4B number 2.
Formatted the SD Card like I normally do and that went fine. Started the Imager tool and it immediately told me there was an update to the imager and to do the update. I did that with no problems.
Just like the Pi4 above, I chose Pi4 64 bit Pi OS Full desktop version which I always do, even though I do not necessarily need to.

The “new” Imager steps through the process a bit different than the older version did, but much of that seems to be just a glossy wrapper around raspi-config. Worked my way through the various steps. The last step is they tell the user there are updates ask if you want to update or skip. That is the last step, I did it a couple of times skipping the updates and doing the updates but it had no bearing on the Pi Imager problem that was going to hit me next.
Once the update step is either completed or skipped the next window is Congratulations, installation is done, click to launch the Desktop.
That click took me back to the first configuration step consistently. The two Pi4’s had been sitting in a drawer for a while so I thought maybe that Pi is doing something flaky. I have a 3D printer and those printers seem to like to destroy SD cards so I got a fresh SD card out along with the second Pi4. Did the whole install process with the Pi Imager tool and got the same exact result. Endless loop through the initial Pi setup. Called it a day at that point.

Next day I got up and took a crack at seeing if I could get the Imager to make it through the entire process, which it did.
I then tried to run the MM install script which gave me the failure I posted about.

I have today, with the original Pi4 it had no issues installing the current version of Pi OS so went right to the MM install script and it all installed just fine.
I went back to Github because you can see when things are updated and was curious about if any Imager or OS updates were taking place at the same time as my problems and yes, there were a bunch of updates that took place at the same time.
I’m looking at the MM initial screen one gets telling me my overweight *** looks hot so l think this was an issue that was really a Pi Imager and OS image problem.

@sdetweil This is not a Docker install.

I would note that I had a very difficult time with installing Pi OS even before I got to the point of using your alternative MM install script.
I tried to run the script again just a few minutes before this reply with the same result. The log file should be on its way to you via your address.

I am going to run through the Pi OS install then follow right behind with a fresh attempt at MM install.
The folks who manage the Pi OS just upgraded the Imager tool last week.
Coincidentally I did two separate Pi OS installs in last couple of weeks. One was before the Imager was upgraded, and one after the Imager upgrade.

Had no issues with the Pi OS install via the older Imager tool. After the upgrade I had nothing but trouble. My low level of programming knowledge tells me that the problem is with the Pi OS image , not the imager tool but either way, it may be that the failure to install the MM is being caused by whatever is causing me trouble with Pi OS setup.

I want to see what happens start to finish.

I am setting up a new MM and using Sam’s alternative install method. I have done this several times with no issues.
I copied the script as instructed, executed it. It runs for a bit but then I get the following failure message.
This is being done via Pi Connect.
Here are the lines I get.

Installing helper tools ...
nvm_command is sudo n v22.18.0
installing correct version of node and npm, please wait
tar: bin: Directory renamed before its status could be extracted
tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors
Error: failed to extract archive for 22.18.0
node failed to install, exiting

@sdetweil I’ve done that. I intend to follow-up with those folks tomorrow. There are a few NWS API pages that indicate what options are available and while they show various iterations of Forecast, Current is not in the list. They have the api set where you can plug in GPS coordinates, the NWS office that manages those GPS coordinates and it will generate the https address so you just plug it into the module. That is what I did a few years ago when I first built that MM.
I am going to look at Observations options at bottom of the picture to see if the have changed the format.

I am using the default weather module and accessing the Weather.gov option to give me both the current weather and the forecast using “current” and forecast options. They are stacked one above the other.
About a month ago the “current” option quit working and I am leaning toward NWS changing the API to a different term. Does anyone have experience with that module using weather.gov as who they are pulling the data from that might have some insight?

I am in the process of getting an older MM up to date and doing some tweaking of individual modules while I am at it.
When I load config.js file into VS Code, it looks like two instances of Code launch but the Pi appears to lock up and become unresponsive and I have to toggle power to get it to reset.
I say “it looks like” because the locked up Pi shows two instances of Code in the Pi OS version of the task bar.
The mirror runs fine, does what it is supposed to do, and I can edit the config file in one of the other editors with no issues.
I did uninstall and reinstall Code but that did not help.

@sdetweil Thank You