Remora install on Raspberry Pi 400

Hi All,

I have managed to buy a Raspi400, despite the chip shortage, and I am looking to use Remora to interface with an Octopus Pro board to handle the real-time step generation.

I started by getting the latest 32 bit image using the official raspi imager tool.  This was a fairly quick dead end as I ran into issues at step 9 of the install guide:
Guide: remora-docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/sof...nc-installation.html
Step 9: 
It basically fails with a broken pipe error
So without the real time kernel, I tried the next step (sudo apt-get install linuxcnc-uspace-dev) but that failed with 'unresolvable dependencies'

Does anyone have any advice or things I can try?

Cheers

Greg

Hey, welcome aboard, what version of octopus did you get?

Anyways back to the pi, For the initial install, I recommend grabbing an image from this thread, they are premade images and it makes install as easy as loading the SD card. Look for a 2.9 version, and it will be a seamless install. I dont know if halcompile is included in 2.8.

www.forum.linuxcnc.org/9-installing-linu...t-linuxcnc?start=150

After that, the only kinda difficult part is installing the remora component.
Hop on over to the remora thread if you have any issues with the octopus.

www.forum.linuxcnc.org/18-computer/42276...rocontroller-via-spi

Its an Octopus Pro V1.1, It seems to have accepted the firmware from the Remora repo, which is promising.

Thanks for the heads up on the premade images.

Greg

I think the best version for the latest Pi 400 is the one you find at this link:
forum.linuxcnc.org/9-installing-linuxcnc...cnc?start=130#238020

Keep us informed about your experience with Remora

Brilliant, thank you, I shall be trying it this afternoon

Do I need to do anything to enable the SPI interface on the RPi400?

Greg

There is an option under start menu
PREFERENCES> Raspberry Pi Configuration
under Interface. I dont think you need to though.

With the octopus, make sure you have the right version firmware for the chip either 429 or 446

Update:
The 2.9pre image linked in the above posts worked a treat.  Managed to unzip it, then image it to the SD card using the official RaspberryPi Imager.

The OS itself has a couple of quirks, no browser by default, and getting chromium working was slightly awkward but easily done.

Getting Remora was straightforward, did have to change the branch in git to get the appropriate Remora.c file but that was fine.

I have connected the Octopus1.1 using SPI and UART but I am not getting any comms at all from the Octopus1.1
I am getting 'bad SPI payload=0' 

I have used (what I believe is) the correct firmware: github.com/scottalford75/Remora/blob/96b...PUS_446/firmware.bin

I am uploading the firmware using an SD card, which seems to work as it changes 'firmware.bin' to 'firmware.cur' after reboot. 
I have tried both 'chip_type=STM' and 'chip_type=stm' option within the hal file but nothing has helped. 

The SPI bus on the RasPi is working, according to my oscilloscope.

Any ideas?

Thanks all 

Greg

if you have nothing on the uart with the octopus then somethings wrong

I have used (what I believe is) the correct firmware:

theres 2 chip versions of the octopus pro, make sure its the correct one

How long is your spi cable ?

Also check out the docs page
remora-docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/hardware/octopus.html