🆕[add-on] HassOS Serial Configurator

[adamoutler]

HassOS Serial Configurator

Enables the Raspberry Pi Serial Port in Host Mode. You can connect an SDCard and up to two hard disks or USB drives, which are detected as sda or sdb, and they will all have Host-Mode Serial enabled when you click start.

About

This project is a part of my HassOS Configurator project. The goal of this add-on, similar to root apps on Android, is to make a mole-hill out of a mountain.

Installation

Within Home Assistant, click Supervisor-> Add-on Store → … button (in top left)-> Repositories. Add this repository.

GitHub - adamoutler/HassOSConfigurator: A set of Add-Ons to configure HassOS...

Click “HassOS Serial Configurator”, then install.

Configuration

Be sure to disable Protection Mode. There is no other configuration. This will enable Host-Mode serial on mmcblk0p1, sda1, and sdb1

Operation

Hit the start button and observe the logs. You may uninstall the Add-On when complete.

[adamoutler]

Pre-enablement state, as observed via SSH plugin with Protection Mode disabled

Post-enablement state, after hard power-off reboot

Please note, if you use previously used ttyUSB0 or ttyUSB1 for your Zigbee or Z-Wave device, they will now be ttyUSB1 and ttyUSB2, respectively. You will need to update the OZW add-on configuration.

[adamoutler]

Update: you no longer need to set the protection mode off. I made some change to app armor settings

[Coolie1101 (Coolie)]

Thanks for this, just got my DeskPi Pro and was wondering how to get the script setup, but the output message is a little confusing, do I do the steps outlined in order, or do I do either 1 of the 2?

1. Perform a hard-power-off now.
2. You can uninstall and reboot now.

[grasshopper75 (Tim Carman)]

Hi Coolie,
I had a few issues getting this going too, but managed to figure it out in the end.

1. Install the HassOS Serial Configurator
2. Disable Protection Mode. This was the fix for me, as I couldn’t get it to work without doing this.
3. Start HassOS Serial Configurator
4. Monitor the HassOS Serial Configurator logs. You should hope to see something like this.
   
   
5. Pull the power cable out of your DeskPi, or hold the power button for >3 seconds ie. hard power off
6. Power on DeskPi
7. Once HassIO has restarted, install DeskPi Pro Active Cooling
8. Within DeskPi Pro Active Cooling, click on Configuration and configure your options. The Serial Device should be as shown.
   
   
9. Save your config and start the service.
10. Check the logs for DeskPi Pro Active Cooling. It should now show you your temp readings.
    
    
11. Once everything is working correctly, go back into Supervisor and uninstall HassOS Serial Configurator
    
    

I hope this helps!

[jaswalters]

Thanks for this, I have been struggling to get this working and protection mode was the issue.

[ben.iffland]

Hi, when I start the add-in I get this in the logs:

s6-overlay-suexec: fatal: can only run as pid 1

Can you help please? thanks

[ben.iffland]

Looks like this might be related to a recent HA update …
S6-Overlay 3.x update on our docker base images | Home Assistant Developer Docs (home-assistant.io)

[ben.iffland]

Is this forum still active?

[adamoutler]

Yes. Still active and still works.

[Gizmo]

I just added this to my home assistant Pi 4 setup, it works amazingly well!

[peterjacobsen]

Hi. I have been struggling with this for two days now without success. I believe I have been following the outlined steps above to the dot, however, after restart the /dev/ttyUSB0 does not exists. I am running Home Assistant OS 8.5.

When running the HassOS serial configurator I get the following output:
s6-rc: info: service s6rc-oneshot-runner: starting
s6-rc: info: service s6rc-oneshot-runner successfully started
s6-rc: info: service fix-attrs: starting
s6-rc: info: service fix-attrs successfully started
s6-rc: info: service legacy-cont-init: starting
s6-rc: info: service legacy-cont-init successfully started
s6-rc: info: service legacy-services: starting
s6-rc: info: service legacy-services successfully started
serial already configured on sda1
no sdb1 config found
no mmcblk0p1 config found
This Configurator did it’s job. Perform a hard-power-off now. You can uninstall and reboot now. This configurator only works once.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

[adamoutler]

Power off hard reboot. Pull the plug to turn it off and back on again.

[alj (Al)]

Great detail. After doing it multiple times. Your write-up helped a lot.

Many thanks,

Al

[Levanterman (Nige Levanterman)]

Brilliant, thank you ! The Fan is now ON ! Woohoo

[Darmach]

@adamoutler I see this changes the driver to dwc2 and enables host mode on USB, is that right? How does this enable serial? (I am looking for how to read data off actual serial TX/RX pins of GPIO)

EDIT:
…unless you’re enabling host mode to use usb-serial adapter?

[adamoutler]

That’s it. All the configurator projects are one-shot configuration changes. They’re pretty easy when you have the proper access. It’s just getting that access that can be difficult. I found it difficult, so I hope this makes it easier for people.