I'm installing channels on a Raspberry Pi 4B using the 3.0 HDD flash process as documented on the channels web site. There is a solid green light on the Raspberry Pi.
Is there any other indication that the system is setup correctly?
How do you setup the Raspberry Pi to connect to wifi, or does this installation require a direct connect to the router?
You could plug a monitor into the mini-hdmi port closest to the power adapter. It should bring up a terminal window but that's not how you'll interface with it. You should navigate to the IP address plus :8089.
Wifi should work but considering your TV end devices will most likely be running wifi, running the server off wifi too would be too much congestion.
The Pi image doesn't support WiFi. It has to be hard-wired to the router which is what we recommend for best DVR performance anyway.
Does it not support wifi at all, or just not exposed? Since the original image was based upon hass.io, would their initial NetworkManager config files work?
Not exposed. I would like to add it to the config UI but it is not yet available.
You can SSH in and connect to Wi-Fi if you want:
nmcli r wifi on
nmcli d wifi connect <my_wifi> password <password>
See https://core.docs.ubuntu.com/en/stacks/network/network-manager/docs/configure-wifi-connections
In that case, would the hass.io network instructions work: https://github.com/home-assistant/operating-system/blob/dev/Documentation/network.md
Yes that should work too. In that case, I think you would want to create two files in your CONFIG/network and include the default wired connection as well.
Also FYI, you can mount the first partition on your Pi USB drive (FAT32 called hassos-boot) and also create the CONFIG directory there with your SSH/network configuration. Then you don't need a separate flash drive to configure.
Unless you have a strong reason to use WiFi though, we still just recommend plugging it into your router so you get full gigabit performance and wired latency.