ROS(2) - How much space should I allocate?

GoPiGo
,
1

Question:
How much space (SD card, SSD, etc.), should I allocate for a ROS installation?

Why:
I want to take a small form-factor external SSD and configure it to multi-boot at least two operating systems.

  • GoPiGo OS
    This will be my “development” environment for my GoPiGo experiments.

  • ROS, either 1 or 2
    This way I can “get with the program” so to speak, trying some of my ideas in a ROS environment.

    • P.S.  Which version do you recommend?  The new fancy version created by @cyclicalobsessive?

  • I may want to experiment with others, like the new OS for the Pi-5.

I have several small form-factor external SSDs of varying sizes and I want to make sure that I don’t end up space constrained while conducting my research.

What say ye?

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“Minimum 16GB SSD - Image expands to 10GB” - Recommend 16GB for curious souls, or 32GB for going beyond the inner planets.

Choosing ROS 1 is like today choosing to learn COBOL as your first programming language - uh NO!

Secret about ROS: If you want to make your life easy, the “long term support (LTS) versions” of ROS are installed over the corresponding specific “long term support version” of Ubuntu.

Not so secret about GoPiGo3: Installing GoPiGo3 API and hardware drivers on the specific LTS Ubuntu version is not a piece of cake.

Bottom Line: Do yourself a favor and start with my v5 image of:

  • “Guided Learning Bash Shell Scripts”
  • GoPiGo3 ROS 2 Humble Node
  • ROS 2 Humble SLAM-Toolbox, Teleop-tools (keyboard and joysticks), Nav2
  • ROS 2 Humble Hawksbill
  • GoPiGo3 API and hardware interface
  • over Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish

on a 16GB SSD till you get it configured for your environment, then image it onto your HD if you want.

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You can put the new Pi OS Bookworm Desktop on your HD and run it on your Pi4 but Pi4 images don’t boot on the Pi5 - the /boot/firmware partition will not contain firmware for both systems (when built by the Raspberry Pi Software Installer.

And the ROS 2 Humble v5 image only runs on Pi3B+ or Pi4. Pi5 requires Ubuntu 23.10 which even ROS 2 Humble will not install on, so forget ROS on Pi5 till you want to learn Docker container with ROS Humble over Ubuntu 22.04 all running over PiOS Bookworm or Ubuntu 23.10 with scrambled brains for breakfast.

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