I’m really sorry if this has been asked already, but I’ve had a google and I can’t find clarity on the following.
I’d like to add the Magic Cards add-on to use swipe cards to trigger events, but there’s no official add-on via the dashboard add-ons on my raspberry pi HASSIO.
The github for the add-on says it can run standalone or in a docker. I’m not fully understanding the language of what a docker is. I think it just means a self-contained thing that runs on its own?
My question is, can I install Magic Cards on the raspberry pi that I’m already running HASSIO on? I don’t want to try it and break everything, so I’m looking to see if it’s possible and if others have done it.
HassOS already has Docker installed by default and is the way that HA and all of the other add-ons run - they are all docker containers. So you can run anything that has a Docker image created for it on HassOS (formerly Hassio).
But that doesn’t mean that you have the technical ability to run those apps in Docker. You may but I can’t know that one way or another.
Even if you knew Docker and how to run containers the usual way the issue is that HassOS doesn’t have a “normal” OS so you can’t run the usual Docker commands from the command-line. That means you have to use a work around.
That work around is called “Portainer” (which is installable as an add-on). It allows you to manipulate Docker containers running on your system. You can install images and run containers using portainer but it’s not straight forward. There are a couple of threads that discuss it on the forum.
But as you said, you can mess things up unless you have an idea of what you’re doing. Make a backup before you make any changes.
“Portainer”. I will go look into this now. I have the Google Drive back-up running (solid add-on!), but I’ll take a complete back-up before I try anything.
I’ve found the answer on a post by the developer. Someone else asked the same question here. It cannot be run on the same device. It should run on a separate device. The post is here.
So I’ll need to invest in a Pi Zero. Currently the £5 device is out of stock from direct retailers, and clones are selling upwards of £20 on auction sites. Yikes!