New GoPiGo Pi B+ Dexter Raspbian Speed Difference with Older GoPiGo Pi B

Happy Thanksgiving!

Do you eat turkey on Thanksgiving or maybe moose? :wink:

Ahhh!&nbsp: I can smell it now - stuffed moose with all the trimmings!

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One of the things that I like about the new GoPiGo OS is that I can program in Python and flip over to Bloxter to try something out.

One caveat:
GoPiGo OS only works with the GoPiGo-3 - the red-board GoPiGo.

Another thing:
@cyclicalobsessive mentioned that the last ā€œsupportedā€ version of Raspbian for Robots was the Stretch version, though Buster is also well supported - and that the majority of the effort has gone into GoPiGo OS.

I cannot say that this is the new policy for MR with respect to the GoPiGo, but it makes sense to me.

  1. Thereā€™s only one platform to support.Ā  This is a significant consideration especially if staff is limited and thereā€™s a lot to go around.

  2. There are subtle differences between the old Dexter OS and Raspbian for Robots - and the transition between them isnā€™t always smooth or easy.

  3. (AFAIK) GoPiGo OS is designed to bridge that gap - starting off as a simple scratch-like programming environment, (based on EduBlocks), that can transition to a full-bore development platform like Raspbian for Robots.

Once my hardware stuff is done, I am going to start transitioning away from R4R to a purely GoPiGo OS environment to test that theory.

@cleoqc, is this correct?Ā  Should I report discrepancies?Ā  (i.e.Ā  This works in R4R, but not in GoPiGo OS?)

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Everything should work for either OS, so yes, if there are discrepancies, please report them.

Nitpicking: Bloxter is not based on Edublocks, but on Google blockly.

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I received a nice reply from Modular Robotics.
Nicole Parrot (Modular Robotics)

Oct 12, 2021, 10:18 AM MDT

Hello William,

We did get a batch of GoPiGos with 16 tick motors. A software fix was applied on GoPiGo OS, and if you do an installation on Raspberry Pi OS.

We are slowly moving away from Raspbian for Robots, favouring instead direct installs on Raspberry Pi OS, or using GoPiGo OS. Raspbian for Robots was created years ago because the official os at the time was sorely lacking. However this is no longer the case. Raspberry Pi OS now comes with a VNC server, a method to boot up the Pi completely headless, including on the first boot and an easy method to change the hostname.
You can install the full suite of GoPiGo libraries and tools on Raspberry Pi OS using the following commands:

curl -kL dexterindustries.com/update_gopigo3 | bash
curl -kL dexterindustries.com/update_sensors | bash

At the other end of the sprectrum, GoPiGo OS - as opposed to Dexter OS - is now a fully open platform. You have a wifi access point for ease of access, but you can still log into the desktop via VNC or SSH. And if you want to connect the robot to your surrounding wifi, you can too.

Iā€™m sorry for the f-strings, thatā€™s all on me. I like f-strings and since both GoPiGo OS and the latest Raspberry Pi OS support them, I just went ahead. Obviously I didnā€™t consider the possibility of people updating on previous versions. Iā€™ll remove the f-strings.

Nicole,
ModRobotics Engineer

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