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Single-board Computer

This is a Raspberry pi 3/4 Model B. The basic installation steps are:

  • Install base 64-bit Raspberry pi OS (no user interface needed). Instructions are here.
  • Create a user called tart sudo adduser tart
  • Enable the SPI interface (this is done using raspi_config on an rPi, and modprobe spi_rockchip on the Quartz64.

Set the hostname​

Do this carefully. This will be used to connect the TART telescopes together. We typically use the following convention. <cc>-<institution> Where <cc> is the two digit country code, and <institution> is an abbreviation of the host institution. For example bd-iub would be the Independent University of Bangladesh.

The hostname is set using the raspi-config utility. If wireless networking is going to be used, then this is the time to set this up.

Install SPI support.​

Also using the raspi-config utility.

Install some packages​

The following packages are needed to continue with the install. Mostly this is docker.

Docker​

The TART operating software is based around docker. We recommend using the official docker distribution.

    sudo apt install curl docker.io docker-compose git
    sudo usermod -a -G tart docker

Install the TART operating software.​

The code here, is usually installed via SSH remotely. However the following can be done if that is not an option.

    git clone git+https://github.com/tart-telescope/sbc_code
    cd sbc_code/software
    make install TART=~/code

Local Mode (for testing)​

After the sbc_code is installed on your raspberry pi. Then add in the configuration files as outlined in the sbc_code docs, and

    docker compose -f docker-compose-local.yml up

This will launch a local-mode telescope:

Cloud Installation​

Once your TART is tested using local mode. Then the TART is ready to connect to the global TART network. This involves working with the TART team.

TailScale​

The TART single board computers are connected to a global network. This connection is managed using the tailscale VPN. It is installed on the SBC using:

    curl -fsSL https://tailscale.com/install.sh | sh
    sudo tailscale up

Then contact the TART team for connection to the TART network.