Newbie unable to get past the initial Screenly push

I’m a newbie to Balena and using Screenly. I was hoping to find an easy to use digital sign application.

When I run “balena push projectname” it fails with “Could not detect project type: Service main: package.json: engines.node must be specified”.

========================================================
balena push staffinfo
[Info] Starting build for testproject, user xxxxxx
[Info] Dashboard link: balena dashboard
[Error] Could not detect project type: Service main: package.json: engines.node must be specified
[Error] Not deploying release.
Remote build failed

Hardware is Pi 3. I’m developing on Win 11 Pro. Running commands from PowerShell. The Balena OS in use is development version 6.5.50+rev2, ethernet only.

The device is up and running according to the Balena dashboard. I can ssh into the device.

Hi @novice603,

You might find some guidance in this (although somewhat old) blog post: Build a Remote-Controlled Digital Display with Screenly OSE & Pi

I’ve looked at that webpage and the info must be missing a step because I get the error about engines.node when following the instructions.

I’ve been reading the documentation in the docs folder included in the release. Following the balena-fleet-deployment document I get a different set of errors. For this test, I’m using Linux instead of Windows for the build environment.

$ wget “https://github.com/Screenly/Anthias/archive/refs/tags/v0.20.3.zip”
$ unzip v0.20.3.zip
$ cd Anthias-0.20.3
$ ./bin/deploy_to_balena.sh --board pi3 --fleet fleetname
Building for pi3
Using default /dev/shm size of 256mb for the viewer service
== ACCOUNT INFORMATION
USERNAME: username
EMAIL: username@mydomain.com
URL: balena-cloud.com
Running in production mode…
[Info] Starting build for fleetname, user username
[Info] Dashboard link: balena dashboard
[Info] Building on 9ffb677
[Info] Pulling previous images for caching purposes…
[Success] Successfully pulled cache images
[Error] Some services failed to build:
[Error] Service: anthias-wifi-connect
[Error] Error: no matching manifest for linux/arm64/v8 in the manifest list entries
[Error] Service: anthias-server
[Error] Error: no matching manifest for linux/arm64/v8 in the manifest list entries
[Error] Service: anthias-viewer
[Error] Error: no matching manifest for linux/arm64/v8 in the manifest list entries
[Error] Service: anthias-websocket
[Error] Error: no matching manifest for linux/arm64/v8 in the manifest list entries
[Error] Service: anthias-celery
[Error] Error: no matching manifest for linux/arm64/v8 in the manifest list entries
[Error] Service: redis
[Error] Error: no matching manifest for linux/arm64/v8 in the manifest list entries
[Error] Service: anthias-nginx
[Error] Error: no matching manifest for linux/arm64/v8 in the manifest list entries
[Info] Built on 9ffb677
[Error] Not deploying release.
Remote build failed

@novice603 which Pi 3 model are you using? (3A, 3B, 3B+) and are you using the 32 or 64 bit version of balenaOS for the Pi3?

I was able to get Anthias up and running on a balenaOS Pi 4 using these instructions: Anthias/docs/balena-fleet-deployment.md at master · Screenly/Anthias · GitHub

However, there seem to be two typos. To clone the repo I used


git clone https://github.com/Screenly/Anthias.git

rather than

git clone git@github.com:Screenly/Anthias.git

as shown.

Also, the deploy script example has an extra backslash at the end. It should look similar to:

./bin/deploy_to_balena.sh --board pi4 --fleet alanb/anthias-2025

Pi 3B.

Image is “Raspberry Pi3 (using 64bit OS)”, BalenaOS v6.5.50+rev2 ; WiFi and Developer selected.

Dashboard shows current release is v2.0.4+rev2

I reran the attempt to deploy and the output is below. I tried both “–fleet myfleetname” and “–fleet myusername/myfleetname” and the result was the same. Perhaps the Pi 3 isn’t actually supported?

==========

./bin/deploy_to_balena.sh --board pi3 --fleet myfleetname
Building for pi3
Using default /dev/shm size of 256mb for the viewer service
== ACCOUNT INFORMATION
USERNAME: myusername
EMAIL: myusername@mydomain.com
URL: balena-cloud.com
Running in production mode…
[Info] Starting build for myfleetname, user myusername
[Info] Dashboard link: https://dashboard.balena-cloud.com/apps/#######/devices
[Info] Building on #######
[Info] Pulling previous images for caching purposes…
[Success] Successfully pulled cache images
[Error] Some services failed to build:
[Error] Service: anthias-wifi-connect
[Error] Error: no matching manifest for linux/arm64/v8 in the manifest list entries
[Error] Service: anthias-server
[Error] Error: no matching manifest for linux/arm64/v8 in the manifest list entries
[Error] Service: anthias-viewer
[Error] Error: no matching manifest for linux/arm64/v8 in the manifest list entries
[Error] Service: anthias-websocket
[Error] Error: no matching manifest for linux/arm64/v8 in the manifest list entries
[Error] Service: anthias-celery
[Error] Error: no matching manifest for linux/arm64/v8 in the manifest list entries
[Error] Service: redis
[Error] Error: no matching manifest for linux/arm64/v8 in the manifest list entries
[Error] Service: anthias-nginx
[Error] Error: no matching manifest for linux/arm64/v8 in the manifest list entries
[Info] Built on #######
[Error] Not deploying release.
Remote build failed

Perhaps try the Pi 3 balenaOS non 64 bit version. It may be expecting armv7hf architecture.

When adding a device from the Balena dashboard, there is no Pi 3 non 64 bit version in the menu pulldown. :frowning:

You’ll have to create a new fleet and choose the Pi 3 (non-64 bit) as the default device type. Then you should be able to add a Pi 3 device.

Ahah! That was the missing piece. I forgot that I had to select a board type when I created the fleet, since creating a device also asked for a board type.

  • created a new fleet selecting RPI 3
  • created a new device selecting RPI 3
  • flashed image and booted RPI
  • git clone git clone https://github.com/Screenly/Anthias.git
  • ./bin/deploy_to_balena.sh --board pi3 --fleet myusername/myfleetname

I’m waiting for the deployment to finish, but things look good. I’m hopeful.

And it works! Using the RPI web interface, I uploaded an image to display. Now to RTFM and figure out how to use Balena Cloud to manage this and the content. :slight_smile: