Greetings!
Here is an interesting article on enabling the built-in 64 bit kernel in Raspbian. (which includes R4R and possibly ROS)
The instructions, summarized, are:
- Backup your current instance to a spare SD card.
- Run rpi-update and allow it to continue despite the dire warnings.
Since you have a backup, (You DID make a backup, right?), you can safely ignore them. - Reboot and run uname -a and you should see:
Linux raspberrypi 5.4.59-v7l+ #1336 SMP Wed Aug 19 16:09:04 BST 2020 armv7l
The “armv7l” is the key that you’re still running a 32 bit kernel.
- In the [Pi-4] section of /boot/config.txt, add arm_64bit=1, reboot, and re-run uname -a.
You should see:
Linux raspberrypi 5.4.59-v8+ #1336 SMP PREEMPT Wed Aug 19 16:16:01 BST 2020 aarch64 GNU/Linux
The “aarch64” is the key that you’re now running the 64 bit kernel.
For Pi-3 users:
If you want to try this with a Pi-3, do everything noted above, except that you put the arm_64bit=1 line somewhere else in the config.txt file.
Give it a try and see how it works.
Don’t forget to post results.
P.S.
- Your Mileage May Vary, this is why you made a backup.
(You DID make backups, right?) - Things that require getting Down and Dirty with the hardware itself, (like flashing firmware), may not work or may do unpredictable things.
- i.e. I would expect it not to work, but if it does, interesting!
- In the true spirit of The Experimenter’s, (Hacker’s), Creed, don’t go whining to Modular Robotics/Dexter if things don’t work out right and/or it crashes your robot.
- Instead, report results here and revert to your backup. (Removing/commenting out the arm_64bit=1 line should also work. It’s worth a try.)
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- Instead, report results here and revert to your backup. (Removing/commenting out the arm_64bit=1 line should also work. It’s worth a try.)
I am going to try it and see what happens.