Setting up BlueOS for a Remote Operated Robot

BlueOS is Blue Robotics Raspberry Pi software to control ROVs, it combines the functionality of the Raspberry Pi companion software for use with a Pixhawk and the Raspberry Pi’s IO capability, to reduce the amount of external components required.

The installation instructions as well as the download link for the BlueOS software on the project documentation website.

I am going to evaluate BlueOS to control my K9, and then on my ROV, if it works on either of these projects it would make the software development easier.

Flashing the BlueOS SD card

The documentation recommends using the Balena Etcher software to burn the BlueOS iso to the SD card, however, I use the equally capable Raspberry Pi Imager. I installed Raspberry Pi Imager on my Mac via Brew.sh:

brew install --cask raspberry-pi-imager

  1. Download the latest stable version of Blue Robotics Blue OS from GitHub.
  2. Make sure that you have installed and run either Raspberry Pi Imager or Balena Etcher
  3. Insert the SD card into your computer (you may need an SD card reader)

First Boot

  1. Eject your SD card with the new BlueOS software
  2. Insert the SD card into your Raspberry Pi, and power it up!
    • The first boot may take a couple of minutes, as it expands the filesystem to the new SD card capacity
    • It should take around 2 minutes for a 16GB SD card
  3. By default, if BlueOS does not have a wifi connection configured within 5 minutes of booting, it will start a wifi hotspot which, when connected to, allows accessing the BlueOS interface via blueos-hotspot.local
  4. The hotspot SSID is BlueOS (*****), with the password blueosap

I could not get the webpage to load either using blueos.local, blueos-wifi.local or via blueos-hotspot.local, In the end, my solution was to plug the Raspberry Pi into my home network via an Ethernet cable and allow it to get an IP address via a DHCP lease from my router.

The “Vehicle Configuration Wizard” can be run again at any time, from the cog settings menu on the left-hand side.

BlueOs Pirate Mode

Pirate mode on Blue Robotic’s ROV software enables access to a lot more controls, some of which should enable me to use this with my K9

BlueOS Cockpit

At the moment, there is nothing connected to the Raspberry Pi, so there is not much I can do with the software at this point, but opening the Cockpit link in Google Chrome (It suggests that support for Firefox is limited). The Cockpit extension also has a configuration wizard.

I haven’t found out how to make this work with custom hardware at this point, however, this is a good place to leave it at the moment, to come back and try to interface it to an Arduino

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