Companion on the Raspberry Pi

Companion on the Raspberry Pi - A Primer

ℹ️ First and foremost: Companion can be installed on a Raspberry Pi 2B, 3B, or 3B+, but it is not recommended or supported. Should you choose to do so, you do so at your own risk and with the understanding that the community will not be able to help you if something goes wrong.

The Raspberry Pi 4 is the first Raspberry Pi SBC (single board computer) that is able to stably run the Companion software. The 4GB variant of the Raspberry Pi 4 is the only recommended option. As stated above, any Raspberry Pi SBC prior to the 4 is unsupported and is used at your own risk.

If you are installing Companion from scratch, make sure you've got your system updated with the latest eeprom/firmware updates (info here). A recent update (late October 2019) combines the update mechanisms for both the SPI EEPROM and the VLI USB controller chip. Installing the latest updates will (in the future) open up the ability to boot your Raspberry Pi from a network-connected device or from an external USB storage device, and also updates the VLI firmware to reduce power consumption and bring running temperatures down by up to 3-4 °C.

Securing your Raspberry Pi

If you haven't already, it is strongly recommended to change the default password of the pi user. If you're using the CompanionPi images, you should also change the default password of the companion user. Doing this will help secure your system from unauthorized access. There are other security-oriented best practices that are recommended, such as:

• making sudo require a password
• making sure you've got the latest security fixes
• improving SSH security

All of these recommended best practices can be found here, on the raspberrypi.org website: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/security.md

CompanionPi Images

You can find current CompanionPi documentation here: CompanionPi Documentation

The images are currently being developed and/or tested to confirm viability. As they are deemed viable for public consumption, download links will be made available.

Manual Installation

Instructions for installing Companion manually on a Raspberry Pi 4 2GB/4GB can be found here: Manual Install on Raspberry Pi

Updating Companion

Instructions for updating Companion on your Raspberry Pi can be found here: Updating Companion on your Raspberry Pi

Upgrading Companion

If you have a Companion v1.4 build that you want to upgrade, you can find those instructions here: Upgrading Companion