Companion Computer

The Companion Computer is the onboard computer or processing unit for the quads. In this documentation we will go over the installation setup process of our Companion Computer.

Setup

The Companion Computer can be setup and ready to use by following the below instructions for the appropriate manufacture.

ODroid - XU4

Warning

The ODroid companion computer will be deprecated in a future release in favor of the NVIDIA TX2 Jetson computer.

This setup requires the user to clone an image of the computer OS to an eMMC card which will be used directly on the ODroid board.

Before we begin, we will need the following:

  • The Etcher USB Cloning software (https://www.balena.io/etcher/)
  • Image of the OS can be found here (File name of 20190305_MSL_Quad_ODroidKernel4_14_Ubuntu16_04_Rootless_GPIO.img with md5 of 2ab920b681a6fa5b60ab7570bb309be6)
  • An eMMC card
  • An eMMC to microSD adapter
  • A microSD card reader

Once the image is flashed, you will also need:

  • ODroid - UX4
  • Monitor (with HDMI connection)
  • HDMI cable
  • USB keyboard/mouse
  • Power supply

Installation Steps

ODroid Installation

  1. Open Etcher
  2. Choose “Flash from file” and choose the location of the image file mentioned above.
  3. Select the eMMC card under the “Select Target” option.
  4. Click “Flash!”

Once the flashing begins, Etcher will inform you of it progress of flashing. After cloning has completed, Etcher will verify the image on the eMMC before informing the user that the flash has completed. once completed, you can unmount the eMMC card and install it on the companion computer.

Here is an example of how Etcher should look before you begin the flash. Etcher Example

Finalizing the Image

Once the eMMC is installed on the ODroid, plug the keyboard, mouse and monitor into the ODroid and turn it on. The system will boot to the Ubuntu Mate login screen and ask for the password. Enter the password, which is the same as the username. You will need to update a few files on the system.

  1. Change the hostname in the files below to quad#, where # is the number of the quad being made.
    1. /etc/hostname
    2. /etc/hosts

Note

These files should have quad7 for the hostnames, as the image was created from our “Quad 7”.