Installing MagAO-X on a Raspberry Pi

Configuring the Raspberry Pi

Prepare the MicroSD card

The first step is to use a Raspberry Pi imaging tool to image an SD card. On Windows, you can download the Raspberry Pi Imager from the Raspberry Pi Website.) The MicroSD card can then be inserted into your computer. Now open the Raspberry Imager and select the Raspberry Pi Device you have, the operating system (OS) (Ubuntu server 24.04 LTS), and the storage (your MicroSD card). To access the OS customization, use ctrl+shift+x. This is where you can set hostname, username password, etc.

Note

It is crucial that you ‘Enable SSH’ in the OS customization.

Now click ‘next’ and ‘write’ to install the OS on the Micro SD card.

In the MicroSD, update cmdline.txt by adding the following string to the end: ip=192.168.0.5::192.168.0.1:255.255.255.0:rpi:eth0:off. Note that this ip can be changed to match your desired static ip settings.

Boot the Raspberry Pi

Insert the MicroSD card back into the Raspberry Pi. If you are using your PC, you can use an ethernet cable to connect the Raspberry Pi to your PC (you may need an Ethernet to USB C adapter). You can now power up the Raspberry Pi (This may take a couple minutes to boot).

While this is booting, go to ‘Settings’ on your computer, then ‘Ethernet’. In here, edit the IP assignment to Manual, the IPv4 address to something similar to 192.168.0.6, and the IPv4 mask to something similar to 255.255.255.0. This needs to be the same as what was added to cmdline.txt.

After this is complete, go to your terminal and ping the Raspberry Pi’s IPv4 address ping 192.168.0.5 to ensure it is receiving you. Then SSH into the Raspberry Pi ssh 192.168.0.5.

Connect the Raspberry Pi to WiFi

The first thing to do is to edit the netplan file /etc/netplan/50-cloud-init.yaml to:

network:
    version: 2
    ethernets:
        eth0:
            addresses:
            - 192.168.0.5/24
            match:
                macaddress: dc:a6:32:ef:87:8a
            routes:
            -   to: default
                via: 192.168.0.1
            set-name: eth0
    wifis:
        wlan0:
            optional: true
            access-points:
                "summit-data": {}
            dhcp4: true

The part that needs to be added is wifis: and below, where "summit-data" is the name of the WiFi. If the WiFi has a password, delete the {} and add password: "ENTER_PASSWORD_HERE" indented under "summit-data". Back in the terminal, run the following commands:

$ sudo netplan --debug try
$ sudo netplan --debug generate
$ sudo netplan --debug apply

You may then check to see if you are connected to the WiFi using the ip ad command. The IP address of the WiFi can be found here. This can be used to ssh back into the Raspberry Pi.

Connect automatically to WiFi

Create a new file called ‘interfaces’ with sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces and add the text auto wlan0. Then sudo reboot and wait a couple minutes to ssh back in using the WiFi’s IP address.

Install MagAO-X

These steps are also outlined here, however there are a few that are unnecessary. Provided below is a simplified version.

Clone MagAO-X into your home directory.

$ cd
$ git clone https://github.com/magao-x/MagAOX.git

Switch to the setup subdirectory in the MagAO-X directory you cloned (~/MagAOX/setup) to perform pre-provisioning steps.

$ cd ~/MagAOX/setup
$ ./pre_provision.sh

This will give you a prompt where you will want to select ‘workstation’.

Run provision.sh

$ cd ~/MagAOX/setup
$ bash provision.sh