[Sticky] Components & Programming

@robo-pi

If you ever get to use the latest version, 2.81 (soon  2.82), you'll love it, as it's miles ahead of 2.79 in every way shape and form, especially because it has a real time render engine named Eevee, aside from the more accurate Cycles render engine, and uses collections rather than layers, which offer far greater flexibility.

@frogandtoad, @robo-pi

I decided to go to the Blender YouTube channel for my first taste of using Blender.

And I thought I would start with the "Fundamentals" video list.

Unfortunately, the narrator rattles through his narratives like a machine gun, without taking a breath. Which is not ideal, as I like to watch the videos on my iPad while having the application open on my computer screen, to try things out along the way, or just to click the icons to see what comes up before unpausing the video. Some pauses are really required just to be able to have time to stop the video.

Speed dating a new program makes learning the basics very difficult for me. My brain doesn't work that fast anymore. ? 

@frogandtoad,

Yeah it's too bad v2.8x won't run on the Jetson nano.   I can't afford to run out and  buy a computer just to be able to run Blender.    So I'll have to get buy with v2.79.   It will be real interesting if I ever get to the point where I need something better.  If I ever come to that bridge I'll cross it at that time.   Actually that would be pretty awesome to get to that point. ? 

I'm 70 years old.  I might not exist long enough to need anything more powerful. ? 

@robo-pi

I stumbled across a couple of videos, both entertaining and informative, I think I may try this myself as it does show some of the conceptual sides of creating models. Certainly not as dry as the "fundamentals", that's for sure!

@pugwash

tutor4u is pretty good, I've learn't a lot from him in the past.
There are many many YT channels available for Blender content, and many have basic tutorials amongst them.

The biggest tip I can give anyone is to learn to keep your object scale in check.  For example, try to add a bevel (a chamfer) on the default cube when it first opens, and the chamfer will be even.  Then add a new cube and scale it first, then apply the chamfer and it will not be what you expect, as a lot of the modifiers rely on the default scale.  If you scale in edit mode, it is ok, but not when in object mode - This is where the misery and frustration comes from, because you always forget you scaled something in object mode 🙂

Posted by: @robo-pi

I haven't yet found anything that will read and write actual images directly from one SD card to another. Even if you save a system image file from one SD card to another, I don't think that image file would boot.  It's just a file with the extension *.img.    It's not a direct clone of the original  SD card.  It's a file.

The sd card copier on the rpi was made specifically for cloning the system sd card  to another drive. I did this multiple  times with my  rpi3,(I have not yet tried it on  my rpi4)  and the copied card did boot ( it also had all the other data I had added onto the card). 

For a more detailed explanation, look at this link

https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/another-update-raspbian/

you my need to scroll down

This link will have  whole bunch of graphics because I have no idea how to copy a link without the graphics coming in.

UPDATE: OOPS the link didn't even come, just the graphics did ? How do you insert a link with out that happening?

The sd card cloner is in the main menu under "accessories" on raspbian Jessi and Buster I don't think it is included on earlier versions of the OS. 

Posted by: @egers

The sd card copier on the rpi was made specifically for cloning the system sd card  to another drive.

Thanks.  I didn't know they had that.   I've been seriously bad about  upgrading the distributions on my Raspberry pies.   They don't have the option you've pointed to.  They are that far out of date.

So I'm upgrading the OS now.  This will probably take a couple days with my slow Internet speed. I probably should have just downloaded a new updated system image.  Although doing it this way all the configurations and programming I had previously gone through should be preserved.  Hopefully.

Hopefully this will work to clone the Jetson Nano systems.

They do say:

The program does not restrict you to only copying to a card the same size as the source; you can copy to a larger card if you are running out of space on your existing one, or even to a smaller card (as long as it has enough space to store all your files – the program will warn you if there isn’t enough space). It has been designed to work with Raspbian and NOOBS images; it may work with other OSes or custom card formats, but this can’t be guaranteed.

It's actually the Jetson Nano cards I want to clone because they are  64GB.     I've been using 16GBs on the pies and they haven't been too bad to clone using Win32Diskimager.  Thus far 16GB system cards on the rpi have been more than enough room for what I'm doing with them.  But now if I can clone cards directly I can move up to larger cards without worrying about the hassle of backing them up as *.img files on a hard drive.  I can just back them up to another SD card.

Anyway, thanks for the tip.   I didn't know the rpi offered this accessory.  I asked about doing this on their forums before and no one ever mentioned this.  That was a while I back that I had asked, but I didn't think it was that long ago.  Maybe it was?  This option appears to have been first offered in 2016.  That would be about 3 years ago.  Maybe that was how long ago I had asked about it.  Probably so.  I gave up too soon apparently.

Anyway, in about 3 years time this rpi3 should be finished upgrading.  I'll let you know how that works out.

@egers

Do you know the name of the package? I build my Raspbian systems starting with Raspbian Lite, and can not find the sd card cloner in the repositories.

8-Dale

Ok apparently this didn't work.   It appears that I still have the older distribution of the OS.  All it did was upgrade that out-dated distribution.

Apparently I'll need to download a brand new distribution of Raspbian and reconfigure everything all over again from scratch.  What a bummer.  I'll have to reconfigure my WiFi, all my personal settings, reinstall all my software and reconfigure them the way I like them again, and re-install remote desktop, etc, etc, etc.

At least after I do all that I'll be able to make and SD card back-up of the new configurations. ? 

It seems to me that with computers 90% of my time is  spent trying to keep the computers up to date.

Posted by: @hybotics

I can handle complexity. It is those simple things that confound me!

?

This isn't going well at all.

I got a pi up and running with a new OS.   Is has SD Card Copier in the Accessories menus.   Yippee!

Unfortunately when I try to launch it nothing happens.   I get a mouse pointed with an hourglass for a while, then the hour glass disappears and that's it.    No dialog window appear asking me what devices I would like to copy to and from.

What a bummer!

Today is apparently not  my lucky day. ? 

What do I do now?  I suppose I could try running "update" on this NEW OS.   I guess that's worth a shot.

Owl be back.

Boo Hoo!  After doing a system update and reboot, it still does nothing.

Edited to add:

This  is taking too much valuable time.  I can't get PiClone to run.  The desktop menu button does nothing but give me a temporary hour-glass that eventually disappears and nothing else happens.

I've even tried going to the directory where the PiClone script is stored and running that directly by just telling it to run that file.  It does the same thing as the menu button.

I even tried running it directly from the command  prompt.  I get a Gtk error there so apparently PiClone will only run on the desktop GUI?

 I have no clue.  I'd run it from the command line if I could, but I don't even know how to do that, or if it's even possible.   This is just sucking time out of my otherwise creative agenda for tonight. ? 

 I could  have had a couple SD cards cloned by now.

I'm at the end of my rope here.  I don't know what to try next other than going onto Goggle and  searching for answers.  Let me try that right now,...

~~~~~

OMG! What nightmare!

It appears that PiClone cannot be run from a Remote Desktop.   That's how I run all my Raspberry Pies.   So apparently that's the problem.

There are two solutions:

1. Put a head on the rpi. ? 

I suppose I could try that, I did have one hooked up to a VGA monitor once.

2.  Or the other solution appears to abandon PiClone entirely and go in and do it by hand with a bunch of very complex dd type  Linux command line commands.   And from what I've seen on Google this requires a lot of specific parameters be used specifically for the devices  you want to clone.

So I guess I'll try putting a head on the pi and see  if that works.

@robo-pi

Try a "sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade" There have been some problems with the usual "sudo apt upgrade" such as the file manager not opening.

I remember reading somewhere, possibly on the rpi forums that you can run the cloner from the command promp, I just don't remember the command. If I find it I'll let you know

Posted by: @hybotics

Do you know the name of the package? I build my Raspbian systems starting with Raspbian Lite, and can not find the sd card cloner in the repositories.

I got my system off of  NOOBS, and I don't think that it's a package you can download. It just comes preinstalled.

From what I've read my problem was due to accessing it via remote desktop:

Posted by: @egers

I remember reading somewhere, possibly on the rpi forums that you can run the cloner from the command promp, I just don't remember the command. If I find it I'll let you know

If that's true that might work even via remote desktop.  So if you find that command please let me know. I'll appreciated it.

Just as an update, I ripped the head off the Jetson Nano and put it on the rpi.  This is the first time this rpi had a head so it's asking me all sorts of questions like as if this is the first time it's ever been booted up.   I have to admit that it does look nice on a 22" HDMI monitor. ? 

 In any case, it wanted to update the system again so it's doing that now.  I'll have to wait another 3 years for that update.

Maybe someday in the far future I'll actually be able to clone an SD card.

I can't even use the Jetson Nano while this rpi is updating because it's wearing the Jetson Nano's head.

Oh well, if I get this squared away tonight it will be worth it I suppose. 

But yeah if you can find a way to run PiClone from the command line prompt let me know.  That might work even when its headless.

I really don't need heads on the pies.  I do like to use the desktop GUI though, so that's why I use remote desktop.   That's been working for me up to this point.   I wonder why PiClone won't work headless?   Everything else seems to work ok with the headless configuration.