Since I got a RP4 8GB from microcenter with a fan case, I tried to use it to replace pc for daily use. Here I shared my searching results if you are interested.
I have another RP3 which I used as NAS to share contents in my USB HDD through network
OS system: Ubuntu server arm version installed in RP3 which is used as SMB sever. So that all the devices connect to same router can access documents and video stored in the USB hard Disk. Raspberry PI OS 32bit installed in RP4. I didn’t use 64bit due to lack of DRM support for Netflix or Hulu which are necessary to my family.
curl -fsSL https://pi.vpetkov.net -o ventz-media-pi
sh ventz-media-pi
Enable GPU Acceleration for Chromium: First of all, we need to use raspi-config to increase GPU memory to at least 128GB. Then follow the article next to enable each option. Raspberry Pi 4: Hardware accelerated video decoding (GPU) in Chromium – LeMaRiva|tech . If you watch YouTube, you’d better install plug-in “h264ify” in chromium to force stream h264 rather than v9 to decrease CPU utilization.
After enable GPU Acceleration, you can type chrome://GPU to check the results.
HDMI Audio output: In /boot/config.txt, find HDMI_Drive, change value to 2.
Other Settings: It is better to enable SSH and VNC if you need to remote control RP. The setting you can find through command raspi-config or raspberry configuration in menu.
Other Apps: VS Code – works; Teams – Only Browser; Zoom – Only Browser, and if too many people in meeting, it would be very slow; Remmina (RDP remote client) – works. VLC( media player) – 4k works; Spotify – only Browser.
bottom line:
would I use it for works? – NO. I would suggest apple M1
would I use it for play movie or surfing? – Yes. At least, no problem to watch Netflix or YouTube. (1080p)
Since Microsoft upgraded WSL to version 2, it introduced full Linux kernel and full VM manage features. Except the performance benefit through deep integration with windows, WSL2 allows installing additional powerful apps like docker and upgrading Linux kernel anytime when it is available.
Two months ago, Microsoft with NVIDIA brought GPU acceleration to WSL2. This new feature made me exciting, so that we don’t have to train our models on a separated Linux machine or install dual OS startup.
Figure 1: Stack image showing layers involved while running AI frameworks in WSL 2 containers. The container provides integration with CUDA related components. WSL2 communicates with windows host through GPU paravirtualization protocol
Before I start, I did some search about basic ideas of virtualization and WSL2 GPU. It is good for me to understand how GPU paravirtualization works in WSL2.
Types of virtualization
Figure 2: four major types of virtualization
Full virtualization. In full virtualization, there is almost a complete model of the underlying physical system resources that allows any and all installed software to run without modification. There are two types of full virtualization.
software assisted full virtualization( binary translation). like VMware workstation(32bit), virtual PC, VirtualBox(32 bits). issue: low performance
hardware- assisted full virtualization. eliminates the binary translation and directly interrupts with hardware ( intel VT-x and AMD-V). like , KVM, VMware ESX, Hyper-V, Xen. issue: virtual context execute privileged instruction directly on the processor.
Paravirtualization. Paravirtualization (PV) is an enhancement of virtualization technology in which a guest operating system (guest OS) is modified prior to installation inside a virtual machine (VM) in order to allow all guest OS within the system to share resources and successfully collaborate, rather than attempt to emulate an entire hardware environment. so the guests aware that it has been virtualized. products like Xen, IBM LPAR, Oracle VM for X86
Xen supports both Full virtualization and Para-virtualization
Hybrid virtualization(hardware virtualized with PV drivers). virtual machine uses PV for specific hardware drivers(like I/O), and the host use full virtualization for other features. products like Oracle VM for x86, Xen.
VMware paravirtual with hardware full virtualization
OS level Virtualization. aka containerization. No overhead . Products like docker, Linux LCX, AIX WPAR
The difference between VM and container
Except containerization, all virtualization use hypervisor to communicate with the host. We can take a look how hypervisor works blew.
You can see vmmen process on your windows task manger. It is the process for virtual machine in wsl2
Install Nvidia Container Toolkit( nvidia-docker2)
Figure 9: docker in WSL2 with NIVIDA container toolkit
9. Start A TensorFlow Container
# test for docker
docker run --gpus all nvcr.io/nvidia/k8s/cuda-sample:nbody nbody -gpu -benchmark
# pull tersorflow image and run it
docker run -it --gpus all -p 8888:8888 tensorflow/tensorflow:latest-gpu-py3-jupyter
After you pull tersoflow image, and run it. You can see following instruction:
Figure 10: replace 127.0.0.1 to localhost, and open this URL on your browser then we can use GPU acceleration in our WSL2
As Samsung canceled its “Linux on Dex” project, there was only option to run Linux on SBC like raspberry pi, but that leave us ugly design and lack of flexibility. Why shouldn’t we use our phone to run Linux directly? So there upcoming two choices:
Native phone installed Linux, eg. pinephone. Its not expensive, and very cool. You can buy it here. The downside is there are not many apps you can install…
Run Linux on Android phone. So that you can install android app as well as Linux environment. All your need is three apps:
bNCV Free: connect to Linux GUI.
Termux: terminator to install Linux commands
AndroNix: download Linux Distro.
I was using my Samsung S8, which provides big screen projection through Dex. Dex is still an android desktop, but pretty like windows. Then I follow the steps mentioned on this YouTube.
After install Linux (I chose Ubuntu KDE), and connect to it. You can do whatever in it. Blew is my screenshot after I installed visual code.
Visual Code for ARM version
Let’s summary:
Pros:
Flexibility. You don’t have to bring your laptop, but only have to find a monitor or TV.
Apps. Run android and Linux apps at single phone.
Very Geek.
Corns:
It’s better you have a high end phone, like S20. My s8 still slow sometimes as its 3GB memory.
Not native Linux. I feel its working pattern pretty like WSL on windows. Performance may be an issue.
If you work on Windows during your most time, you must be curious about why should I shift to Linux and why suddenly Linux becomes so popular in the recently decade, even Microsoft migrated Linux kernel into latest windows version named WSL/WSL2 and run its 70% cloud service on Linux including SQL server.
Why should we use Linux?
Although Windows is still the dominate leader especially in the desktop market, more and more professional industries are moving to Linux. The emerging areas like loT device, cloud service, smart phone are all using Linux. In my points, there are several things Linux significantly better than Windows: Reliability, Software management, Hardware compatibility and Customization.
Reliability: How many times you meet blue screen and reboot on windows? Install an application —> reboot; uninstall —> reboot; change a setting —> reboot; even security upgrade will cause a reboot. On Linux, you will never worry about it. It significantly reduces downtime of server.
Software management. On windows, “Click-Installation” maybe an easy way for a normal user, but it would never be a good way for programmer or server admin. Linux adopts a repository methodology, pretty like “Android store”. We only need to run a very short script like “sudo apt install <appname>” or “sudo snap install <appname>”. Even more, we can put all scripts together as a bash, then we can leave it alone and have a cup of coffee.
Hardware compatibility. So many smart devices coming out these years. They have weaker computational ability compared to the desktop or laptop, but we can put them anywhere and let them control home security, TV, freezer or washer. You can not install windows on these device since it is too “fat”. Linux is a good choice and has a nice compatibility with ARM device.
Customization. Not everyone like flexibility. My wife, for example, likes out of box using. So I would never recommend Linux for her. but for the most geek or tech worker, Linux could provide varies distros and desktop environments. In each environment, you can also deeply customize in term of your needs.
How to set Linux for your daily life?
First thing first, you need to choose Linux distro. Linux has hundreds distros, and coming out many branches each year. but most of them are child-parent relationship. Debian, Red-hat and Arch are three most popular families. Here we look at Debian and Arch family. For the daily life, we need to use stable and easy to use one. Debian, Ubuntu, Mint Linux are all good in Debian family. Manjaro, Arch are the most popular in Arch family. Beside these, you can also find Android and ChromeOS in the left distribution map. But they are only designed for mobile or special device.
If you are beginner for Linux and want to get wiki answer quickly. Ubuntu LTS would be a good choice. In end of April, 2020, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is going to launch.
In the following steps, I will use Ubuntu for example by default.
Second, How to install application. As I mentioned before, Linux use Repository to download and install application. Basically, Repository is like a store where you can find a list of goods(application) in it. For different Linux distros family, you would use different repositories. In Ubuntu, you can run following simple script to install application.
# update repository as root
sudo apt update
# install application
sudo apt-get install <app name>
# find the install path of application
whereis <app name>
There is another popular repository called snapcraft which is my favor. Install snapcraft is super easy: https://snapcraft.io/docs/installing-snapd. In Ubuntu, you only need to run:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install snapd
Then in the page of application page in snapcraft, you can copy the installation code from there. I took Visual Studio Code for example blew.
“sudo snap install code -classic” is the installation script.
If you feel even script is complex, you can install snap store, which provides you “Android store” like GUI and click-install experience.
sudo snap install snap-store
Categories in Snap store
In some case, you can only find the application on the official website, like anaconda, Microsoft Team. What should we do?
For deb file, just click and install, this is the package for Debian family. If failed, use script below.
Most applications you can find Linux version, they are some alternatives in Linux.
Windows Application Name
Alternative
Google Drive
insync
Evernote
NixNote2
MS Office 365
LibreOffice or office online
check point VPN
SNX
my workplace
Third, Command Line. Terminal is the most important tool in Linux. Once you familiar with it, you would never use your mice. Since terminal saves you lot of time. Here I list some common commands. For more information you can check: https://files.fosswire.com/2007/08/fwunixref.pdf.
# check command meaning
man <command name>
# file operation
ls # listing files and dir
cd <path> # change to the path
pwd # show current dir
mkdir <dir> # create dir
rm <file> # delete file
rm -r <dir> # delete dir recursively
cp -r <dir1> <dir2> # copy dir1 to dir2
touch <file> # create or update file
cat > <file> # places standard input into file
more <file> output contents of file
# file permission
chmod # change file mode
chown # change owner of file
# ssh
ssh user@host
# system info
top/htop # task monitor
whereis app # app location
df # disk usage
w # who is online
# compression
tar cf file.tar files # create tar file
tar xzf file.tar.gz # extract a tar using Gzip
tar xf file.tar # extract a tar file
# download
wget
# search
grep <pattern>
# split terminal
tmux
# schedule
crontab
# back up
sudo dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/media/c/back.img
What else benefit can Linux bring for you?
For big data engineer, the most popular foundation is Apache software, which provides many excellent projects, like spark, hadoop, Kafka, Maven,Tomcat. All of these are natively support Linux. And they recommend using Linux as well.
For application developer, python, java, C# have already cross platform. You can choose whatever OS you like. As I said before, you won’t meet the problems of windows in Linux, which saves you lots of time.
For administrator, Linux provides sable and flexible solutions. You would send out mails less that explains downtime for some upgrading maintenance.
Who is not recommended moving to Linux .
If you are very sticking to some software like Adobe suit, you need to leave Linux away.
These days I am coding a Linux shell running for AZcopy, since my laptop is running windows, so I switch between two operations systems. The strange problem came soon:
./azCopyToAzure.sh: line 7: $’\r’: command not found
source ./config.cfg can not found
when I was using echo ${log_dir}!!!, the result is !!!XXX, basically, the !!! will come to the beginning and overwrite ${log_dir}
After wasting almost two days, I found the problem. It caused by difference between end of sequence in windows and Linux. Here is from wiki:
The term CRLF refers to Carriage Return (ASCII 13, \r) Line Feed (ASCII 10, \n). They’re used to note the termination of a line, however, dealt with differently in today’s popular Operating Systems. For example: in Windows both a CR and LF are required to note the end of a line, whereas in Linux/UNIX a LF is only required. In the HTTP protocol, the CR-LF sequence is always used to terminate a line.
https://www.owasp.org/index.php/CRLF_Injection
In vs code , we have to change this setting at the bottom of right side.
I thought there should not be many person developing bash on windows, but if you are, hope this can solve some of your problems.
Lots of ready-to-use opensource project can be found on internet for raspberry PI object detection. Most of them can do very well to motion detection or object classification. I am thinking how to merge them together to make a practical security system that can help all of us to make our home safety. Since It is open source, I will share my design, source code and project milestone. ( mostly to push myself to finish it eventually 🙂
Design:
start camera to capture each frame
save the first frame as reference. and this reference frame will be replaced every 5 mins when there is no movement detected.
continuously compare the current frame with the reference frame.
if any movement detected, draw some interesting areas.
loop these interesting areas, if its size out of threshold, move it to next DNN network.
use DNN network to classify the object.
if object is human, trigger dedicated process “Event process”. includes, recording video, send notification and make speaker noise.
loop to the next frame.
Milestone:
Oct 10th-15th: finish basic function to detect movement, recording video and send mail.
Deep learning: How OpenCV’s blobFromImage works. https://www.pyimagesearch.com/2017/11/06/deep-learning-opencvs-blobfromimage-works/
Raspberry Pi: Deep learning object detection with OpenCV. https://www.pyimagesearch.com/2017/10/16/raspberry-pi-deep-learning-object-detection-with-opencv/
how to install opencv on the raspberry pi 3 Model b+ (with camera) https://pysource.com/2018/10/31/raspberry-pi-3-and-opencv-3-installation-tutorial/
Home surveillance and motion detection with the Raspberry Pi, Python, OpenCV, and Dropbox. https://www.pyimagesearch.com/2015/06/01/home-surveillance-and-motion-detection-with-the-raspberry-pi-python-and-opencv/
I still remembered the song “pineapple”, the singer is a wired middle age man, looks like this: Today, what I wanna talk about is similar to “pineapple”. It’s called “WSL”.
what is WSL?
WSL is an abbr for windows subsystem for linux, where you can run linux on windows like an app.
How does it work?
very simple!
run windows store , find ubuntu and install it.
check the wsl option in turn windows feature on or off
you need to restart you computer after check it.
run ubuntu as your application, all commands are same.
Where is GUI?
Sorry, by default, it is only a kernal system. So, basicly you have to run with commands. But there is a workaround: Xming. You can find detail here . I only tried two steps: install ‘Xming’ and setting display export DISPLAY=:0 . Then I did successfully run Geany with GUI! Don’t tell me you don’t know how to run app on consoler.
Existing Problem
I tried install program by sanpd, but it awalys showed me error message.
Who can try it
If you like both Linux and windows, WSL gives you a opportunity to waive the dual booting problem. You can aslo access windows drivers under /mnt/.
Well. I have to agree “Hello world” is one of my favor titles. Since I bought a raspberry pi which supposed to do some deep learning works, like object detection, I have to do something before my camera coming from amazon.
Today, what I wanna talk about is similar to “pineapple”. It’s called “WSL”.