Open Sourcing AWS DeepRacer 🚀

General
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deepracer
deepracer1046×1046 3.48 MB

Hello ROS Community,

We are thrilled to announce that we have migrated the AWS DeepRacer device software from ROS 1 to ROS 2, and made it available to the open source community via the AWS DeepRacer GitHub today.

AWS DeepRacer now offers an integrated hardware and software kit to develop and contribute to the ROS 2 ecosystem. Our developer community is showcasing the possibilities with innovative projects and in the process, making AWS DeepRacer extensible for prototyping and development.

To get started, please visit the AWS DeepRacer Open Source page and use one of the sample applications. Developers can use the AWS DeepRacer (Evo model is not required), download and build the GitHub repositories to their vehicle, and run the installation script. We welcome issues, comments, and pull requests in our GitHub repositories.

To celebrate the open sourcing of the device software, we are offering a 25% discount on the AWS DeepRacer ($100 off) and AWS DeepRacer Evo ($150 off) until May 27, 2021.

On behalf of the entire AWS DeepRacer team, I would like to thank you all for the continued support. Hope we can accelerate the development of autonomous robots together.

Regards,
Cam

21 Likes
2

I’m excited to try this out, but I’m hitting a blocker in the upgrade guide. Please let me know if there is a better place for this feedback.

I followed the (Windows) guide to setup the BOOT and FLASH partitions and everything looks correct. I go into the BIOS and select boot from file, browse to the BOOTx64.EFI file and select it, then wait. Some version of Linux is booting up, I can’t tell whether it is 16.04 or the 20.04 install, but after ~10 seconds I’m sitting at my 16.04 desktop. I’ve retried the boot from USB instructions several times and get the same results each time. Has anyone else encountered this?

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Hi John, our team is looking into it. We’ll provide some support shortly. Thank you for letting us know.

4

Hi John,

Could you please confirm and provide a bit more information about your setup:

  1. Can you confirm if you obtained the ISO and flash_reset.zip files from this link (Upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04 - AWS DeepRacer).
  2. While creating the USB flash drive, the BOOT partition has to be 4Gb for Ubuntu 20.04 ISO image.
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@Siddalingesha_DS yes, that is the link I followed. Specifically I downloaded https://s3.amazonaws.com/deepracer-public/factory-restore/Ubuntu20.04/BIOS-0.0.8/ubuntu-20.04.1-20.11.13_V1-desktop-amd64.iso and https://s3.amazonaws.com/deepracer-public/factory-restore/Ubuntu20.04/BIOS-0.0.8/factory_reset.zip which were linked from the Windows instructions.

This is my USB disk after following the partitioning/formatting instructions and setting up the BOOT and FLASH partitions.

ros2-usbdrive
ros2-usbdrive978×163 31.9 KB

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@john-at-foxglove.dev
Thank you for confirming. We tested the USB drive creation steps on Windows 10 and were able to upgrade the device. Can you verify if there is any mismatch by recreating the USB drive? (may be use another USB if possible?) Attached screenshots to help in verifying the intermediate steps.

USB Partitions:

Diskmgmt_final
Diskmgmt_final722×158 17.3 KB

Unetbootin (Drive F:/ is selected as location) :

Unetbootin
Unetbootin610×564 11.8 KB

bootloader order, Esc > Boot From File > BOOT > EFI > BOOT > BOOTx64.EFI (Boots the 20.04 OS):

IMG_20210429_110319
IMG_20210429_1103194032×3024 603 KB
IMG_20210429_110141
IMG_20210429_1101414032×3024 710 KB

Once the right EFI file is selected, the Ubuntu 20.04 iso will be loaded and the flash script will be triggered.

7

I recently ran into the same issue with 128G Flash Drive, I solved this by using another 32G Drive, it turns out the BIOS /UEFI Firmware doesn’t support the boot from a flash driver larger than 32G.