Struggling to Start

Hello!
I received my shiny new Home Assistant box yesterday. The steps to get started are simple & straightforward. But I can’t connect to the box with the iOS App or the macOS app. With the box plugged into my router, & AC, I see flashing green & yellow lights beside the R45 port and blue and red lights from around the voltage adapter port.
I’ve followed the three steps at least 2 dozen times; plug in the internet cable, plug in the power adapter, open the Homeassitant app and follow.
I get a connection light on my network switch. At the welcome screen, I tap continue. At the "scanning screen I watch the little network tree flash on/off. Once out the two dozen tries I saw a line that described a network connection. Selecting it resulted in a red disk with a white cross and a error. Otherwise, I resort to typing in the suggested address: http://homeassistant.local:8123
Then I get an “Unknown error:…”
So, I’ve arrived here, because the “TROUBLESHOOTING” page I received with my shiny new box, took me here.

Can an ameriDroid rep help me out?

Hi!

Have you tried with the IP address instead of “homeassistant.local”? Should be something like: http://XXX.YYY.WWW.ZZZ:8123 (with numbers instead of letters of course, that’s just a “template” of what the IP should look like.

You should be able to get the IP address assigned to the HA box from your router web config site.

Cheers,

Joaquin

The connection to my network is implied by blinking lights on the HomeAssistant box & my network switch. But Scanning all connected devices shows nothing identified as a new device. I’ve even taken the time to port scan every device online (>50) No device reports 8123 as open.
I think at this point, I’ll seek a return/exchange of the pretty blinking box.

Not sure what you purchased I assume you bought just a raspberry pi? Is the memory card fully inserted(assuming it has one)

Thanks for asking, Jason. A relevant question in this community. I have a Home Assistant Blue. With nothing but initial configuration scenes on a couple of sets of paper, I’m inclined to believe the box is setup with the hardware & OS setup & ready to run.

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Ok so it’s ODROID-N2+ Hardware.
one thing to keep in mind is the first boot can take a long while for things to fully load up. I assume you gave it plenty of time to do its initial boot up?

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Intriguing…

To avoid any misunderstanding, this is the Home Assistant community forum, where members help themselves to the best of their time and/or knowledge.

There might be “reps” around to specifically support the blue box, but I’d be quite surprised…

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Actually, a blinking light on a switch is no indication. You could have link at the network level, but no IP assigned to your device (or a fixed IP from a different segment set up), lights would blink on your switch but you wouldn’t be able to access your device.

I just took the time to watch a few minutes of a Dr ZZs video about your device, he too had problems to access it through the dns name the first time… and had to check the IP of the device on his router.

I’ve copied the URL of the video around the time it starts by plugging in the device.

If your scan shows no new device as you said in your reply, and the port scans came empty too I would think it could either be a problem with the image installed on the eMMC Flash, a problem with it or worst, the box itself as it might not be booting. Have you tried to connect an HDMI cable to it? Does something show up on the the screen while/after booting?

If you want to try to reflash de device, take a look at this first (one of the replies talks about an mistake on the procedure described in the documentation (second link):

And then this: Common tasks - Operating System - Home Assistant

Check out the video, it might shed some light on the initial setup.

The links should help you solve any software issue. If none of that works, I’d lean towards a hardware problem and contact either the seller and/or the manufacturer.

And concerning your later reply, I do consider my first question to be “relevant”.
As @koying said, this a home assistant users community forum, we help each other out.

Cheers,

Joaquin

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Thanks again!
While watching the vlog I connected an HDMI cable. A console with a prompt came up on screen. I used root to login. I showed a valid IP address. I verified that with IP Scanners. The device shows a manufactured name of WIBRAIN and a local dns name: homeassistant.local
Using that info I am still unable to connect to the box by manually typing in the IP address or the local dns address. A port scan of that address shows only 4357 and 5355 open. Not 8123.

If I type the address followed by port 4357 into a web browser, I am greeted by a white screen that reads:“Home Assistant observer” “Supervisor: (in green) Connected”

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So it is working… you certain your network settings or router settings are not blocking connection? Sounds like you need to triple check your network configuration. I just use a raspberry pi4 and works great so cannot say anything about the shiny box you bought other then it certainly appears to be working you just cannot connect to it on your network for whatever reason probably some security setting/software blocking it but I’m guessing

Ok, now I’m pretty certain that you have a software issue. The box is booting, you are getting a valid local IP, HA is simply not fully starting up for some odd reason.

Have you taken a look at the other links? The ones that describe the procedure to reflash it?

I don’t know what kinda of warranty you have on the box, but I’d try that.

Thanks for the verification, such as it is possible. I’ve been checking the links and user groups as I can. I’ve been trying to get a dialog going with ameridroid. The time with the holiday just makes everything longer. One way or another I’m sure it’ll workout. I’ll post as a solution is presented.

One last thing…
Connect the HDMI cable, log in as root and try this command: ha core rebuild

If it doesn’t do it by it self reboot after it finishes.

Keep the HDMI connected to check for IP address after it reboots.

Try to access once again using http://[whateverIPyouGotInLastStep]:8123

Done. The response was: “Note: Leading ‘ha’ is not necessary in this HA CLI
Processing…Done.
Error: Unknown error, see supervisor

Going to port 4357, the Supervisor page says: Connected

in the CLI, try ha supervisor logs

Tapping the return key gave me command line examples. After coming back to the ha > prompt I typed in supervisor repair. Processing was the reply. After it reported done I commanded “restart”. The end result was the same. I’ll see what sense I can make of “logs”.

logs seems to say that it is in SETUP.
info returns data that tells me the thing is running the way it should.
channel: stable
healthy: true
ip_address: 172.30.32.2
I don’t know where that’s coming from my local addresses start with 10. It has the correct time zone. It’s running version 2012.06.6

core info or supervisor info ? The 172. IP address would be the Supervisor Docker container. Don’t worry about that, use the IP address shown when you use core info

To dumb it down: 172.x.x.x seem to be a “virtual” own network within those containers. Nothing to be worried of.