Setup basic_bot on a Raspberry Pi4 or Pi5 with Debian Bookworm

...for basic_bot, ovencv and tflite

Flash and Boot

First you need to flash an image to a microcard reader using the Raspberry Pi installer.

Debian Bookworm is the new Raspian Bullseye. Good article on the differences. The rest of this guide is specific to Bookwork, which at the time of this update is the default OS used by the Raspberry Pi Imager.

Here is a montage of the various settings I chose:

Just answer yes to the remaining questions and ...

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SSH into the pi

ssh pi5.local

Verify that Debian Bookwork was installed:

bee@pi5:~ $ cat /etc/os-release
PRETTY_NAME="Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm)"
NAME="Debian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="12"
VERSION="12 (bookworm)"
VERSION_CODENAME=bookworm
ID=debian
HOME_URL="https://www.debian.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://www.debian.org/support"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.debian.org/"

Update and upgrade OS

sudo apt update
sudo apt full-upgrade
sudo reboot

SSH back into Raspberry Pi after reboot.

Check versions:

bee@pi5:~ $ python --version
Python 3.11.2
bee@pi5:~ $ python -m pip --version
pip 23.0.1 from /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/pip (python 3.11)

Install Basic Bot

Follow the instructions in Getting Started for installing and running basic_bot.

Use picamera2 instead of opencv if using ribbon cable camera

As of Feb 7, 2025, OpenCV camera capture will NOT work on Debian Bullseye or Bookworm with a ribbon cable camera.

You must either use a USB camera or use the basic_bot.commons.camera_picamera module.

See the API docs for using camera_picamera for more information about how to use.