Operating System

We built a customized and optimized version of the Debian-based ev3dev distribution called ev3dev-robolab.

This section will guide you through the setup of our OS. It will explain how to get it up and running on your robot.
There are also some more in-depth explanations for advanced users or special use cases.

Downloads

Stable

The latest release we offer for the RoboLab courses is v2.6.5.
This image is based on Debian Buster and will be updated from time to time.
Please make sure to always download the latest version of our image!

For validating the images see our Checksums file.

Older and Deprecated Versions

For the RoboLab courses of 2018 and earlier we offered release v1.3.
This image was based on Debian Jessie and uses an older python version.

Releases v1.3 and older v2.x are no longer available for download!
If you still need it email us, please.

Development History

This section gives you some insight of which features we added to our image compared to the original one.
If you just want to use our OS without any further reading, you can safely skip it.

Changes since v2.6.x:

  • Based on Debian Bullseye
  • Python: Added latest 3.11

Changes since v2.5.x:

  • Based on Debian Buster
  • Fixed issue with beep for non-root users
  • Fixed issue with SECTIGO SSL certs
  • Several SSH performance improvements
  • Disabled some unnecessary services

Changes since v2.4.x:

  • Based on Debian Stretch (still, Buster is planned)
  • Some service updates taken from the online RoboLab in 03/2021
  • Service fixes
  • Made apt-get working for our own repository

Changes since v2.3.x:

  • Based on Debian Stretch base
  • Python: Added latest 3.9 (from Bullseye repository)
  • Newer OpenSSL, sntp, tmux packages
  • Removed package mosquitto-clients
  • Updated RoboLab-Service for “online” labs

Changes since v1.x:

  • Based on Debian Stretch
  • Python v3.7.3
  • Removal of some old and unused packages and services
  • Backup and Session scripts packed inside the image
  • Works with SSH Public Key (if used with newer Deploy-Script)
  • Security: Changing the initial password is required
  • Security: No password required for some sudo operations
  • MQTT: Package mosquitto-clients pre-installed
  • Wi-Fi auto-connect for RoboLab Playground

Our OS ev3dev-robolab is a stripped down version of ev3dev and comes with the following additional features:

  • Based on Debian Jessie
  • Python v3.6.7, including the Python packages:
    • python-ev3dev v1.2.0 language bindings
    • paho-mqtt
    • reloader
  • Git
  • tmux

Furthermore, it was tweaked to provide better reliability, higher performance and less memory consumption after boot.

References