How To Install ROS2 Humble Base On Raspberry Pi 4B (FULL INSTALL)

Learn how to install ros-humble-ros-base on Raspberry pi 4B running Ubuntu 22.04 LTS server

If you'll be building intelligent robotics applications, chances are you’ll want the power of ROS2 running on a compact, efficient platform like the Raspberry Pi 4B. This guide walks you through the complete process of setting up ROS2 Humble on on a Raspberry Pi running Ubuntu 22.04 Server — from the initial installation to configuring essential tools like colcon and rosdep. By the end, you'll be ready to develop and deploy robust robotics applications on this versatile microcomputer.

Let’s dive in and get your Pi humming with ROS2!

Prerequisite

• First ensure you have the Ubuntu 22.04 LTS server installed on the Raspberry Pi 4B (2GB, 4GB, or 8GB. The higher, the better)

• Also, if you did headless installation, you should be able to communicate with the Pi from your Dev PC (also running Ubuntu 22.04 LTS) via SSH.

All we'll be doing in this tutorial assumes you are able to communicate with your Raspberry Pi 4B running Ubuntu 22.04 LTS server with SSH

Installing ROS Humble Base (not Desktop)

Follow the instructions (step by step) to install ros-humble-desktop on your PC.

• Set locale

  locale  # check for UTF-8

  sudo apt update && sudo apt install locales

  sudo locale-gen en_US en_US.UTF-8

  sudo update-locale LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 LANG=en_US.UTF-8

  export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

  locale  # verify settings

• Setup sources and required repositories

  sudo apt install software-properties-common

  sudo add-apt-repository universe

  sudo apt update && sudo apt install curl -y

  export ROS_APT_SOURCE_VERSION=$(curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/ros-infrastructure/ros-apt-source/releases/latest | grep -F "tag_name" | awk -F\" '{print $4}')

  curl -L -o /tmp/ros2-apt-source.deb "https://github.com/ros-infrastructure/ros-apt-source/releases/download/${ROS_APT_SOURCE_VERSION}/ros2-apt-source_${ROS_APT_SOURCE_VERSION}.$(. /etc/os-release && echo ${UBUNTU_CODENAME:-${VERSION_CODENAME}})_all.deb"

  sudo dpkg -i /tmp/ros2-apt-source.deb

• Install all the necessary ROS2 development tools - rosdep, colcon, vcs-tool, etc.

  sudo apt update && sudo apt install ros-dev-tools

• Install ros-humble-ros-base(Bare Bones): Communication libraries, message packages, command line tools. No GUI tools.

  sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

  sudo apt install ros-humble-ros-base

• Source the ros humble environment with this command

  source /opt/ros/humble/setup.bash

Add ROS Setup File To .bashrc For Auto Sourcing

echo "source /opt/ros/humble/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc

Now the ros humble environment setup file will be automatically sourced whenever you open a new terminal.

Setting up colcon for Building ROS2 packages

colcon is a build tool required to build your ROS2 packages created in your ros workspace. You have already installed it when you ran the sudo apt install ros-dev-tools command previously. But we need to set it up for things like tab completion, etc. during builds. Run the following command in your terminal.

• Setup colcon_cd

  echo "source /usr/share/colcon_cd/function/colcon_cd.sh" >> ~/.bashrc

  echo "export _colcon_cd_root=/opt/ros/humble/" >> ~/.bashrc

• Setup colcon tab completion

  echo "source /usr/share/colcon_argcomplete/hook/colcon-argcomplete.bash" >> ~/.bashrc

With all the above added to the .bashrc file, the colcon environment and functions will be automatically activated whenever you open a new terminal as well as automatic sourcing of the ros-humble environment.

To learn more about colcon check the link to its documentation here

you should see the following highlighted text (in the image below) at the bottom of your .bashrc file. Run this command:

sudo nano ~/.bashrc

Intialize and Update rosdep

rosdep is a dependency management utility that can work with packages and external libraries. It is a command line utility for identifying and installing dependencies to build or install a package.

It is most often invoked before before building a package with colcon. It will basiclally download and installing the necessary dependencies a specified in the package.xmlfile so you don't have to manually install each dependencies again.

rosdep was already installed when you ran the sudo apt install ros-dev-tools command previously.

To learn more about rosdep check out its documentation here

Follow the instructions below to instialize and update rosdep:

sudo apt update

sudo rosdep init

rosdep update

Optional (Install Cyclone DDS)

If you would be using ROS2 for navigation and some other high speed data transfer, install and use the Cyclone DDS in place of the default Fast DDS.

sudo apt install ros-humble-rmw-cyclonedds-cpp

export RMW_IMPLEMENTATION=rmw_cyclonedds_cpp

echo "export RMW_IMPLEMENTATION=rmw_cyclonedds_cpp" >> ~/.bashrc

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Creating A ROS2 Workspace

---

• In the root folder of your Raspberry Pi (i.e the home directory), create a ros workspace folder. I would be using this workspace name - ros-ws.

  mkdir -p ~/ros-ws/src

• change directory into the root ros workspace folder

  cd ~/ros-ws

• build the ros workspace initially with colcon (while still in the root workspace folder)

  colcon build

  you should now see three other folders - build, install, and log - apart from the src folder already created earlier. Run ls to see them in terminal

• Let's setup automatic sourcing for the created workspace - ros-ws- in the .bashrc file so that it is automatically sourced whenever you open a new terminal. Run this in terminal:

  echo "source ~/ros-ws/install/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc

Test with helloworld package

• Open a new terminal (to auto source your ros2 environment and workspace) and cd into your ros workspace's src folder

  cd ~/ros-ws/src

• Clone this helloworld_ros2 package in the src folder

  git clone https://github.com/samuko-things/helloworld_ros2.git

• Change directory into the root ros workspace folder

  cd ~/ros-ws

• Optionally, run rosdep to install the neccessary package dependencies specified in the package's package.xmlfile

  rosdep install -i --from-path src --rosdistro humble -y

• Build the package with colcon

  colcon build --symlink-install

• Open two seperate terminals. In one of the terminals, run the c++ talker node:

  ros2 run helloworld_cpp talker

• In the other terminal, run a python listener node:

  ros2 run helloworld_py listener
  

FINALLY: you can also setup and build the helloworld_ros2 package in your DEV PC then run talker and listener in the DEV PC and RASPBERRY PI respectively to see if both communicates with each other via ROS2