Installing

Installing

On the Pi, open a terminal and run:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vwillcox/HomeCanvas/main/install.sh | bash

The installer says what it's about to do before each step, and asks for your password when it needs to install something. A full log goes to ~/homecanvas-install.log.

What it does

1. Checks what's installed, with a ✓/✗ list.
2. Installs what's missing, using your Linux's own package manager.
3. Installs Flutter (about 2 GB, in ~/flutter), the toolkit HomeCanvas is built with.
4. Builds HomeCanvas. This takes a few minutes on a Pi.
5. Connects it to Immich. Have your server's address and an API key ready (in Immich: Account Settings → API Keys). Both are checked as you type them. You can skip this and do it later.
6. Names it on your network, so it's homecanvas.local instead of an IP address.
7. Starts it automatically with the desktop.
8. Sets up the touchscreen, if it finds one (Raspberry Pi OS's labwc desktop).
9. Puts the dashboard editor at http://homecanvas.local. If Home Assistant's Alexa bridge already uses port 80, it asks before sharing it. See FAQ.

At the end it offers to make the Restart and Power off buttons work without a password.

Which Linux

Works out of the box	Raspberry Pi OS, Debian, Ubuntu (apt) · Fedora (dnf) · Arch (pacman) · openSUSE (zypper)
Processor	64-bit ARM (Raspberry Pi 4 and 5) or 64-bit Intel/AMD
Touchscreen set-up	Raspberry Pi OS's labwc desktop. Other desktops use their own touch settings.

On Fedora, the video library (mpv-devel) comes from RPM Fusion.

Options

bash ~/homecanvas/install.sh --check   # only look: what's installed and what's missing
bash ~/homecanvas/install.sh --yes     # no questions: take every default

Doing it by hand

Every step is written out in INSTALL.md → By hand, including building on another computer and sending it to the Pi.