04 — Operating system and the camera proof
Flash Bookworm, prove that firmware and camera work, and only then install anything else.
Flash
Raspberry Pi Imager → Raspberry Pi 5 → Raspberry Pi OS (64-bit), Bookworm (Debian 12, Python 3.11). Not Trixie: the Akida 2.19.3 SDK we reproduce is built for Python 3.11.
Imager settings: hostname, a user of your choice (the guide writes <user>), Wi-Fi or — better for the video stream — wired LAN, locale, SSH enabled. Write, eject, boot.
The camera proof — before anything else
vcgencmd version
python3 -c "from picamera2 import Picamera2; print(Picamera2.global_camera_info())"
Expected: a firmware version line, and a list containing imx708 (one entry per camera).
If vcgencmd answers ioctl_set_msg failed, the VideoCore firmware mailbox is broken. We lost a week here: every software repair failed, the cause was a damaged SD card. Do not continue — flash a new card and repeat this step. If a fresh card fails too, it is the Pi.
System packages
sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade -y
sudo apt install -y git python3-venv python3-pip python3-picamera2 python3-opencv dkms
sudo reboot
Expected: after the reboot python3 -c "import picamera2, cv2; print(cv2.__version__)" prints an OpenCV version from the system packages.
Note the four facts
Write down now — you will need them for every bug report and every rebuild:
cat /etc/os-release | head -2
uname -r
plus, later, the driver commit and akida.__version__.
Checkpoint: imx708 is listed, the system is updated, and you have the OS version and kernel version written down.