On the page that tmm1 had shared, they mention this:
A micro-HDMI adapter can be used to plug the Pi into a TV or monitor. This may be necessary for troubleshooting in some cases, to see where the Pi is stuck and if any error messages from the firmware/kernel/OS are displayed on screen.
Which is why I was thinking there would be content on the HDMI
You should see boot messages and stuff over HDMI. Here is the LED sequence over boot. Can you compare these steps with what you see over HDMI? Even with no USB or SD connected there will be HDMI display for the bootloader eeprom.
The green LED on the front of the Raspberry Pi will go through the following sequence after power-on:
The DVR web interface on http://dvr-server is accessible as soon as the OS boots (step 4), approximately 25-30s after the Pi is powered on.
yea...but only if it is connected to ethernet right?
the Op needs to connect the Pi to Wifi, and there is no way to do that?
There is a way to connect to Wi-Fi but it needs to boot up first. You should see a login prompt over HDMI.
The green LED seq I'm seeing is:
Don't know if the custom image supports serial console via usb to serial adapter.
Do you see HDMI output without any SD or USB attached?
What kind of USB storage are you using? Is it an enclosure with your own drive? What brand drive and enclosure
I do see HDMI output with no SD card and no USB attached. It gives some basic info about the device and a QR code in the upper right and the RPi logo on the upper left.
The USB storage is a SoCal usb to SATA adapter that's connected to a WD 500Gb drive. I have a 512 Ultra USB 3.0 Sandisk flash drive showing up on monday, but I thought I'd test out with what I had to start with.
So the RPi4 USB port is powering your external SATA drive?
I would go with an external enclosure that powers the drive.
Most likely the pi can't supply enough power for the drive.
There are also USB3 to SATA3 adapter cables that come with a 12v (2A) power adapter (for use with 3.5 SATA drives).
That's a good point chDVRuser, I don't actually have a powered SATA adapter or enclosure. I can wait till the USB stick gets here on Monday, but I was looking forward to playing with this setup over the weekend lol.
How far do you get over HDMI if the USB is attached?
So here's where things are at:
So the DVR is up and running and I can access the web interface now and I was able to migrate my old setup to the new box. I don't see a way to switch this over to wifi, which is a bit unfortunate. I do really like how easy the SAMBA setup and integration is though, very handy. Also, I'm assuming there's some default root password and what not for this box, but I've not seen it anywhere in the documentation or the other thread.
Something seems wrong if you don't get HDMI out. Maybe an issue with the display or cable/adapter?
You can I se nmcli to setup a Wi-Fi connection. There is no root password on the console. SSH access requires a key which can be transferred using a usb drive named CONFIG as described in the docs.
RE: https://community.getchannels.com/t/issue-with-raspberry-pi-image/25577/12
I didn't mean this as an endosment. It was put there for those who don't know about tty console over serial interface.
The Debian/Raspbian distribution images include support out-of-the-box for accessing the shell console via the hardware serial port. This can be extremely convenient if you need to access your Raspberry Pi when it is not connected to a monitor and network remote access is not available.
I don't have a Rpi (yet), but I use putty and other programs to connect to various systems via serial ports and telnet, ssh, etc.
So I installed the new Sandisk drive and spent a little time porting the temp drive content over to the new system. I can confirm a couple of things.
if the RPi isn't connected to a wired network cable, the output to the HDMI does not seem to happen. It's possible that the initial boot is halted somehow if it can't connect to the network. I think that was probably my problem before. I generally get the device to boot up, make sure it's secure, and then connect it to my network. With the network cable plugged in, I do see HDMI out and can see the login prompt after boot.
There's something quirky with the setup outlined here:
https://getchannels.com/docs/articles/how-to/migrate-dvr-to-new-computer/#set-up-your-new-channels-dvr-server
If I burn the new bootable USB for the Channels DVR, but I don't do any setup, I go straight to the "restore" option, it tells me that I can't restore from the additional attached storage drive (just a regular fat32 usb stick with the DVR directory on it) without shutting down the DVR. However, to shutdown the DVR, you have to actually setup the DVR. So I have to go through the setup process, have it download all the TVE programming, and then I can shut the DVR down and restore from the attached backup. I don't have an HDR device, so maybe it's not quirky if you have one?
The good news is that I've got the new system up and running on the RPi, so YAY to that!
One final question, what's the advantage of using the Channels DVR image over using a standard RPi image and just doing the "linux install" process and storing everything on an externally connected USB 3.0 drive?
Thanks again for everyone's help!
Single purpose DVR with automatic updates, and easy built-in Samba/Windows file sharing of saved recordings.
This is a little off topic, but every day I'm seeing more and more RPi activity. Before the threads become too cumbersome to move, wouldn't now be a good time to create a sub-forum for the Pi image? Because from where I sit adoption of the image seems to be rolling along nicely.
Dumb question: I just installed the Raspberry pi server on my new p4 8gb pi. Seem to load up great. I enter my login at the first prompt but it tell me I have the wrong log in. Is there an initial login and then I set up my normal user login?
There is no login. You set up using a browser on another device on your home network, via http://dvr-server.local
That's what I was wondering. I see a login in on the HDMI connection but it want accept my user name or password.
Two more question. I used a 64gb micro SD to create my image and have attached a larg hard drive for storage. Is there any downside to doing it this way?
Also, I'm using the 8gb Raspberry Pi 4, so do you think it will help with streaming more than one stream?
Thanks for the quick response by the way.