Regular freezes on Zero 2W

[MWiegand133]

I’m trying to run InkyPi on a Waveshare display connected to a RPi Zero 2W.

Installed the current Raspberry Pi OS (full install if that makes a difference) and even during installation of the InkyPi script the whole system freezes on the first try. After reboot I run uninstall and try installing again. Takes quite a long time but finally finishes. (Did this three times already)

Web comic and NASA image seem to work fine. When trying RSS feed the whole system freezes (SSH connection not possible for regular reboot/shutdown). After hard reset it works again, but only if the SD card isn’t corrupted. (That’s why I had to do the reinstall three times)

Tried writing a plugin for displaying some info from Home Assistant with the same result as the RSS feed.

So my question would be: Are there any settings to make the system more stable running on a Zero 2W? Maybe smaller footprint OS or something else?

[phattmatt]

The Raspberry Pi Zero 2W only has 512MB of RAM.

If you are running the Desktop edition of Raspberry Pi OS, this is taking up some of the RAM, reducing the amount available to InkyPi.

I recommend using the Lite version of Raspberry Pi, which will have more RAM free (no Desktop GUI running), therefore more available to inkyPi.

[MWiegand133]

Hey thanks for the reply. Today I tried running the Lite version, but there were also freezes when trying to install and using InkyPi. So today I tried another install and chose DietPi. After some hiccups due to missing build tools and problems with the SPI-config I was finally able to install InkyPi. Seems to run a lot better on DietPi in combination with a Zero 2W. RSS-Feeds run without a problem.

Used the minimal DietPi-Image and had to install build-essential, python3-dev, pkg-config and git. Then had to enable SPI explicitly in /boot/firmware/config.txt.