Table of Contents

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1. Introduction

NOOBS(New Out Of Box Software) is an easy operating system installation manager for the Raspberry Pi. It has the added benefit of making it easy to set up the Pi to boot multiple operating systems. Here's how to convert a RDK image to a NOOBS-compatible image. You will need read access to all partitions of the flashed SD card. While RPi's instruction simply they can be followed directly from the Pi itself, you may be able to find plugins for your primary computer's operating system to allow read access to the ext-formatted partition of the SD card. This will allow you to use the full power of your computer to create
the compressed disk image and probably save you hours.

2. How to download the Noobs image

Download the latest NOOBS release. You will need the full NOOBS download (not NOOBSLite) since we will be using the included Raspbian image as a base. The latest official release of NOOBS can be downloaded from http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/NOOBS_latest.

3. How to add different RDK images in Noobs file

Here we are considering RDK-V hybrid image as an example:

1. Take the latest RDK-V hybrid image and copy it to SD card using sudo dd command as below.
   1. command: sudo dd if=<image> of=<device path> bs=4M
   2. example: sudo dd if=rdk-generic-hybrid-westeros-wpe-image-raspberrypi-rdk-hybrid-westeros.rpi-sdimg of=/dev/sdb bs=4M
2. Download the latest NOOBS image from the link (http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/NOOBS_latest).
3. Mount the copied SD card and note down the full sizes of the two partitions on the SD card
   1.   /media<pc login name>/raspberrypi - kernel partition
   2.  /media/<pc login name>/ mount point> - rootfs partition
      Image RemovedImage Added
      Image RemovedImage Added
      (Linux users: type df-h in the terminal). We need to create hyb_boot.tar from kernel partition and hyb_root.rar from rootfs partition.
      Note: If images needs to be booted in AV display, then need to follow the below section "Changing output display of RDK images to Composite AV display"  in this page before making tarballs.
      
4. From the command line on your primary computer, navigate to where the rootfs partition is mounted i,e

   /media/<pc login name>/mount point>(/media/trinod/d4cee699-83b9-43ca-9f25-e6a5b63cd008 in this example) and issue below command.

   1. command: sudo tar -cvpf ~/Desktop/hyb_root.tar ./*
   2. This will create the hyb_root.tar file on your desktop.
5. Note down the size of hyb_root.tar.
6. Navigate to your desktop with cd ~/Desktop/ and compress the root tarball by using below command. 
   
   1. command: xz -9 -e -v hyb_root.tar .
   2. This will generate “hyb_root.tar.xz” file on your Desktop.
7. Now we need to do the same thing to the kernel partition.
8. From the command line, navigate to the kernel partition folder  where it is mounted i,e  /media<pc login name>/raspberrypi  raspberrypi (media/trinod/raspberrypi in this example) and create a tar ball by using same command.
   1. Command:  sudo tar -cvpf ~/Desktop/hyb_boot.tar ./*
   2. this will create the hyb_boot.tar file on your desktop.
9. Note down the size of hyb_boot.tar
10. Navigate to your desktop with cd ~/Desktop/ and compress the boot tarball with below command.
    
    1. command: xz -9 -e -v hyb_boot.tar .
    2. This will create “hyb_boot.tar.xz” file on your Desktop.
11. Once NOOBS image downloaded from (http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/NOOBS_latest) . Unzip NOOBS folder and it will look like below.
    Image Modified
12. Open os folder and duplicate the 'Raspbian' folder and rename it 'rdkv_hybrid'.
13. Open up 'partitions.json' and make the following changes:
    
    1. Change the label to “hyb_boot” and “hyb_root” in boot and root partitions respectively.

    2. Change the value for partition_size_nominal for boot partition with the size value for  /media<pc login name>/raspberrypi  from step 3 in megabytes(40MB in this example). But for root partition partition_size_nominal would be triple the partition size obtained from step 5  to make our rdk images to be loaded properly(Generally it would be 1024MB standard size for our rdk images).

    3. Change the value for uncompressed_tarball_size to be the values from step 5 and 9.
14. Open 'os.json' and make the following changes:
    
    1. Change name to rdkv_hybrid
    2. Change whatever else you want.
15. Rename 'Raspbian.png' to 'rdkv_hybrid.png' and replace it with an appropriate icon (say attached rdkb.png icon)
16. Replace any or all of the files in the 'slides_vga' folder with appropriate images (say attached A_rdkb.png and B_rdkb.png for rdkb, also please use A_for_AV.png and B_for_AV.png instead of A.png and B.png in AV display). These will be shown during the install process.
17. Replace the  'root.tar.xz' and 'boot.tar.xz' with  'hyb_root.tar.xz' and  'hyb_boot.tar.xz' files created in steps 6 and 10.
18. Again format SD card in FAT32 format and copy the NOOBS folder contents to it. After flashing rdkv_hybrid should be available as an option in the OS list next to Raspbian.
19. Similarly convert the other RDKV_client and RDKb images into NOOBS images if needed.

4. Boot-up of RDK Noobs

After boot-up RDK NOOBS image, it will show the below list of images available for installation.

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We can boot the required image by selecting it.

5. HDMI vs AV output

Required hardware

AV output display can be validated along with HDMI. We need to use 3.5MM RCA cable for getting AV composite output. From raspberrypi 3.5mm audio and composite output jack we need to connect to TV AV input (yellow, white and Red cable connections).

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