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Turning your ARM device into AngelBox

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Ondřej Perutka edited this page May 16, 2024 · 16 revisions

Are you interested in our AngelBox? You can have one for free! We offer you a complete SD card image for Raspberry Pi 2/3/4 or you can also use our APT repository to install Arrow Client into an existing Debian based ARM system.

Cloning SD card image

Before you continue, you will need the following:

  • 2 GB micro SD card (or bigger),
  • Etcher,
  • our AngelBox image.

Etcher is a multi-platform tool for cloning SD card images. You can download it from etcher.io. The AngelBox image can be downloaded from here. All Raspberry Pi images are named angel-box-rpi-*.img.zip and all Orange Pi Zero images are named angel-box-opi-*.img.zip. To clone the SD card image, follow these simple steps:

  1. Open Etcher.
  2. Select the AngelBox image.
  3. Plug in your SD card.
  4. Select the device with your SD card (unless it's already selected).
  5. Click on the "Flash!" button and wait until the image is written.
  6. Unplug the SD card.

Post installation setup

  1. Plug the SD card into your device.

  2. Connect the device to your local network using an ethernet cable.

  3. Power on the device.

  4. Connect your workstation to the same local network.

  5. Find IP address of your device in the list of DHCP clients of your router OR change IP address of your workstation to 192.168.123.1 and mask to 255.255.255.0.

  6. Connect to the device using SSH (username: pi, password: arrow, address: 192.168.123.123 or the address assigned by DHCP).

    1. In Windows, you can use PuTTY.
    2. In OS X or Linux, open terminal and enter ssh pi@IP_ADDRESS.

  7. Get MAC address of your device and write it down somewhere:

    cat /sys/class/net/eth0/address

  8. Raspberry Pi only: Expand the root filesystem to the whole SD card:

    sudo raspi-config
    1. Select "Advanced Options".
    2. Select "Expand Filesystem".
    3. Confirm.
    4. Finish.
    5. Confirm device reboot.

  9. Orange Pi Zero only: Expand the root filesystem to the whole SD card:

    sudo /etc/init.d/resize2fs start
sudo reboot

Installation from our APT repository

For using the deb packages from our repository, you will need a running Debian Jessie/Stretch/Buster/Bullseye/Bookworm based distribution on an ARM device, e.g. Raspberry Pi OS Bullseye on Raspberry Pi. Log in to your device (either directly or using SSH) and enter the following commands into the terminal:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install dirmngr
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keys.openpgp.org --recv-keys 382B7B1C7F1838240D9DF4E1A244DAA87FBFBC65

# For Debian Jessie:
sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://apt.angelcam.com/ stable main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/arrow.list'

# For Debian Stretch/Buster/Bullseye:
sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://apt.angelcam.com/raspbian-stretch stable main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/arrow.list'

# For Debian Bookworm:
sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://apt.angelcam.com/rpios-bookworm stable main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/arrow.list'

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install arrow-box

The arrow-box service gets started automatically after installation of the package. If you need to start/stop it manually, you can use standard systemd commands:

sudo systemctl start arrow-box.service
sudo systemctl stop arrow-box.service

All logs go into syslog. If you need to modify the arrow-client startup parameters, you can modify them in the /etc/default/arrow-box file. To list all available parameters, run the following command:

/usr/local/arrow-box/arrow-client

Optionally you can also install the arrow-box-utils package. The package contains a cron job that will keep your client up to date, there is also a service that can use one of the RPi LEDs as an Arrow Client connection status indicator and, finally, there is a service that can transform your AngelBox into a cloud speaker. To install the additional package, enter the following command:

sudo apt-get install arrow-box-utils

To enable the connection status indicator:

sudo systemctl enable arrow-box-led.service
sudo systemctl start arrow-box-led.service

To enable the cloud speaker service:

sudo systemctl enable arrow-box-api.service
sudo systemctl start arrow-box-api.service

Connecting to Angelcam

Congratulations! Your AngelBox is ready to roll! Now, the only thing you will need to connect to Angelcam is an IP camera with support of H.264 over RTSP or MJPEG. Connect the camera to the same local network as your AngelBox, go to my.angelcam.com/connect/diy-angelbox and enter the MAC address of your AngelBox.

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