What you will need

  • A computer (the “base station”) with an internet connection and the Duckietown Shell (dts) installed

  • A microSD card (64 GB, U3, Class 10 recommended), e.g., the one from your Duckiedrone box

  • A microSD card reader, e.g., the one from your Duckiedrone box

What you will get

  • A Duckiedrone initialized and customized microSD card, ready for first boot

Software Initialization#

The Duckiedrone’s uses a Raspberry Pi as onboard “companion” computer. The Raspberry Pi requires a (Duckietown-specific) operating system to work, and this section details two ways to do so:

  1. The “fast” way: simpler, but provides no customization options. It is appropriate for a single drone setup. If you are planning to connect multiple Duckiedrones to the same network at any time, use the advanced initialization procedure.

  2. The “advanced” way: requires a Duckietown Shell installation on the base station, but offers full customizability. Must use this procedure if planning to use more than one Duckiedrone on the same network at the same time.

Note

These instructions apply to both the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B and the Raspberry Pi 5. The same ente image is written through dts init_sd_card; only the underlying Raspberry Pi OS base layer differs and is chosen automatically at flashing time.

The legacy pre-built image for the Raspberry Pi 4 (dt-amelia-DD24-brown2022-sd-card-*.zip flashed through Balena Etcher) is no longer supported on the ente distribution. If you used it before, re-flash with the procedure below.