Earlier today I became the owner of a Home Assistant Green.
The OS apparently has to be downloaded before use. In order to do this, I connected the device directly to the switch ports on my router, applied power, and walked away for lunch. When I returned, the device was responsive on :8123, but it was just a “failed to install” message and some logs. The logs ended with these lines:
[supervisor.homeassistant.core] Error on Home Assistant installation. Retrying in 30sec
[supervisor.jobs] ‘Updater.fetch_data’ blocked from execution, no supervisor internet connection
[supervisor.homeassistant.core] Error on Home Assistant installation. Retrying in 30sec
[supervisor.jobs] ‘Updater.fetch_data’ blocked from execution, no supervisor internet connection
[supervisor.homeassistant.core] Error on Home Assistant installation. Retrying in 30sec
(full log: Home Assistant Green Failed To Install - Pastebin.com)
(Kind of, but not really related, I have to say this looks like it couldn’t synchronize time and outside services within the supervisory system. I’ve also never seen a device continually request new IP addresses with the same MAC address, and I have no idea how this device was doing that.)
Ok, so the forums here suggest that’s because you need to have google’s DNS (ugh!) available, unless I misread. Regardless, I reset the router’s DNS to point to google instead of openDNS, and rebooted the machine with the power button. This time, nothing came up on the web interface. I could ping the device, but nothing else. I tried various things, but finally ended up getting a monitor and seeing that it was sitting at “Waiting for CLI to be ready.”
A moment later a message indicating that it was dumping me into the emergency CLI came up. Posts here suggested typing login at this prompt in order to get into the system, which I did - to no result. I ended back up at the waiting, then emergency CLI. I tried a couple of times, and even put the device on a different network in order to test that it wasn’t my primary circuit. No luck. I try a factory reset, and that doesn’t seem to help except that now I don’t get the emergency CLI.
So the software is probably bad, not a big deal there’s a flash method. I grab a nice Sandisk 8GB Industrial card like I use for other SBCs, get a copy of Baleena Etcher, and the image, and write it to disk. Power off with the button, card in, power up. The device acts like there’s no card and tries to boot normally. Ok, maybe the card is bad - a 16GB Micro Center card that I know works fine for Pis and stuff. Same result. Same result with Rufus. Same result with Win32DiskImager. No matter what I’ve tried or what tool I’ve used, I cannot get my green unit to recognize there’s a card in the slot and copy the OS over.
What am I overlooking here? I’m ready to send the device back and eat the restock fee if I cannot get this unit to flash.