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Getting Started with the NVIDIA Jetson Nano Developer Kit

Introduction Table of Contents

The NVIDIA Jetson Nano Developer Kit brings the power of an 1 Introduction
Artificial Intelligence (AI) research platform to experimenters,
2 NVIDIA Jetson Nano
students, makers, and independent developers. In other words,
2.1 Jetson Nano Specifications
folks just like us!
2.2 Powering the Jetson Nano

2.3 NVIDIA Jetson Family

8
2.4 What the Jetson Nano
Developer Kit is NOT

3 Installing Linux with JetPack SDK

3.1 Setting up the microSD Card

3.2 Hooking up the Jetson Nano

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3.3 Installing

  4 Testing the Nano

4.1 Hello AI World
Unlike the other members of the NVIDIA Jetson family of AI
development boards, the Jetson Nano is priced at only $99 4.2 CUDA Sample Program
USD.  This is a fraction of the cost of most other AI development Setup
products.
5 Conclusion
5.1 Resources

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NVIDIA Jetson Nano

The NVIDIA Jetson Nano Developer Kit is actually two products
attached together:
Recent Articles
The NVIDIA Jetson Nano module. This is a small module
with a large heatsink that contains the CPU, GPU, memory Autonomous Rover Project –
and all supporting electronics. On the Developer Kit this Design Requirements
8
module has a microSD card slot.
The Carrier Board. This board has a socket for the Radio Control – Use the Flysky FS-
module, as well as an M.2 connector for a communications I6X with Arduino & Build an RC Car
module (not included). It has USB3, Ethernet and Video
connectors, as well as camera and GPIO connectors. Getting Started with the Arduino IoT
Cloud

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As this is a developers platform it is meant for development, so Using GPS Modules with Arduino &
the Nano module on the Jetson Nano Developer Kit has a Raspberry Pi
microSD card. Production versions of the Nano module have
NVRAM instead. Arduino Nano RP2040 Connect –
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and Amazon are

perfect when you
need...

Powering the Jetson Nano

The NVIDIA Jetson Nano Developer Kit requires a 5-volt power
supply. It can operate in a low power or high power mode.

There are two methods of applying 5-volts to the Jetson Nano.

The first method is to use the micro USB connector on the

carrier board. You’ll need a power supply that can supply at
least 2.5 amperes at 5-volts.

8 have a suitable USB power supply you can use the

If you don’t
2.1 mm barrel jack located on the opposite end of the carrier
board. It will accept a 5-volt 4 ampere power supply.

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If you decide to use the 2.1mm connector you will need to place
a jumper on the carrier board to make it work. The jumper is
located close to the barrel connector, as illustrated here.

The kit does not come with a jumper so you’ll need to provide
that yourself.

NVIDIA Jetson Family

The Nano is a member of the NVIDIA Jetson family of Artificial
Intelligence development platforms.
8

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As you can see from the above chart there are three Jetson
series currently available. The TX1 series is not shown as it is
retired.

Each of the three series works the same way – the Jetson
component is on a module that is mounted on a carrier board.
This allows developers to create their own product using the
NVIDIA Jetson technology. The final product will have a socket
for the Jetson module, and supporting hardware as required by
the application.

What the Jetson Nano Developer Kit is

NOT
Many reviews have criticized the Jetson Nano for not having a
WiFi or Bluetooth connection built in. Others have complained
about the location of the microSD card holder.

While I can understand the criticism I don’t believe it is valid,

which is certainly not a criticism of the reviewers themselves, it’s
just my opinion.

I believe these reviewers have been comparing the Jetson Nano

8 Kit to a Single Board Computer (SBC), like the
Developer
Raspberry Pi 3B Plus.  But the Jetson Nano is NOT an SBC, it
is a development platform.

By leaving out some of the SBC “niceties” NVIDIA has managed

to shrink the cost of its AI development platform to under a
hundred dollars, which is a pretty impressive accomplishment.
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So no WiFi in favor of more GPU power. And the microSD card

is located on the module as that’s where it belongs, in the
production version of the module there is only NVRAM.

Just my own humble opinion! I think the NVIDIA Jetson nano

Developer Kit represents a tremendous value, even without
Bluetooth.

Installing Linux with JetPack SDK

So now that you have your brand new NVIDIA Jetson Nano
Developer Kit how do you get started?

One of the best ways to get started is to visit NVIDIA’s website

for the complete installation process.

Essentially here is what you need to do:

Get the NVIDIA JetPack SDK and Ubuntu Linux image.

Burn the image to a microSD card.
Hook up the Jetson Nano Developer kit.
Insert the microSD card into the Jetson Nano module.
Power up the Jetson Nano Developer kit.
Follow the installation prompts.

Let’s explain a bit of the procedure in more detail.

Setting up the microSD Card

The first step in setting up the Jetson Nano Developer Kit is the
obtain the software image.

You can get the image from the NVIDIA website. It is a very
large download (about 6 GB) so be prepared to wait a while for
the download to complete.

Once you have the image file downloaded you will need to burn
a microSD card with it.
8
You’ll need a microSD card that is at least 16 GB, preferably 32
GB or larger. Make sure that it is a good quality Class 10 card,
as the performance of your developer kit will depend upon it to a
degree.

I’m using 64 and 128 GB cards in my experiments.

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You’ll also need an SD burner. If you don’t have one I would

recommend Etcher, it’s free and available for Windows, Mac,
and Linux.

Because of the size of the image it will take a while to burn and
verify.

Once it is burned insert the card into the Jetson Nano module,
with the contacts of the microSD card facing up towards the
module board.

Hooking up the Jetson Nano

You will need the following equipment to get your Jetson Nano
Developer Kit hooked up:

A USB Keyboard
A USB Mouse
An HDMI or DisplayPort video monitor and cable.
A 5-volt micro USB power supply capable of at least 2.5
amperes.
An Ethernet connection with a CAT-6 cable.

The critical component here is the power supply, it needs to be

capable8of a full 2.5 amperes. Many phone chargers are not
capable of this amount of current. Don’t plug in the power
supply until you are ready to start.

Installing

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Once everything s hooked up you can plug in the power supply.

A green LED is the only indicator you’ll get on the Jetson Nano
carrier board.

After a brief delay, the NVIDIA logo will display on the monitor
and the installation will start.

The installation takes about 15 minutes and most of it is file

copying. Eventually, a Ubuntu Linux screen will display and
you’ll need to fill in information about your language, location,
and user credentials.

After more file copying and a reboot you will arrive at the Ubuntu
Linux 18.04 desktop.

NVIDIA has already added a few icons to the desktop for the
Chromium web browser and for some NVIDIA links.

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This completes your software installation on the NVIDIA Jetson

Nano Developer Kit.

Testing the Nano

Once you have the Jetson Nano up and running you’ll
undoubtedly want to give it a test drive.  There are many ways
to do that.

Exploring the operating system, working with the web browser

and perhaps watching a few HD videos is a good way to get a
general feel for the power of the Jetson Nano as a small
computer. In many ways this would make an ideal platform to
run applications like Kodi or Plex to create a super multimedia
machine.

But you probably want to see some of the AI capabilities of your

new toy, after all, that is why we purchased it. NVIDIA has a
number of resources to get you started.

Hello AI World
Hello AI World is a selection of preconfigured deep learning
inference demos. You can run demos for real-time image
classification and object detection using either images or a
video camera.

The next time we work with the Jetson I’ll be going through
Hello AI World in detail, as it is an excellent launching point for
your Artificial Intelligence development adventures.

CUDA Sample Program Setup

CUDA is a parallel computing platform and programming model
which was developed by NVIDIA for use with its GPUs.  It
allows applications to make use of the many cores in the GPU,
8 on the Jetson Nano module has 128 cores.
the GPU

This means that the code-intensive parts of CUDA applications

can run in parallel on 128 different cores.

In order to test out the NVIDIA Jetson Nano Developer Kit using
CUDA you can run some CUDA Demos. But before you do,

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you’ll need to build them first.

Follow these instructions to build the CUDA sample programs.

Note that this procedure will take more than two hours, however,
you only need to do it once.

Open up the Terminal. You can do this by going to the

Search box in the upper left corner and typing “terminal”.
Type the next two lines of code, give your password for
“sudo” when prompted:

sudo /usr/local/cuda/bin/cuda-install-samples-10.0.sh ~

cd ~/NVIDIA_CUDA-10.0_Samples/

Now type the following to build the CUDA samples:

sudo make

The build will take two to three hours. Keep your hand off
the heatsink as it gets very warm while the system is
building! Note that the build will appear to stop several
times, this is normal and it isn’t really stopped.
When the build has finished you will be back at the
command prompt.
Change into the directory that has the sample code:

cd bin/aarch64/linux/release

You can run any of the demos by proceeding the demo

name with “./ “
You can view the demo names by typing ls
Try ./matrixMul for a demo that just does a math
benchmark
Tyr ./oceanFFT for the Ocean Fast Fourier Transform
demo. You can manipulate it with your mouse.

The CUDA samples will give you an idea of the power of parallel
processing on the NVIDIA Jetson Nano.
8

Here are a few screenshots of some demos I ran on my Nano.

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This is the Ocean FFT demo. It simulates the waves on an

ocean,. You can move it in 3D and zoom in using the mouse.
You can also show or hide the gridlines.

This the Smoke Particles sample. It starts off as a square cloud

of smoke that disperses, with a stationary light source behind it.
You can move around in 3D and observe the smoke and the
shadow that it creates.

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This is Random Fog, a 3D circle of ‘fog”. Each point in the fog is

calculated and you can zoom in and move around using the
keyboard.

Conclusion
The NVIDIA Jetson Nano Developer Kit brings the power of an
AI development platform to folks like us who could not have
afforded to experiment with this cutting edge technology. At 99
US dollars, it is less than the price of a high-end graphics card
for performing AI experiments on a desktop computer.

I’ll be continuing with my work with the Jetson Nano. I intend to

use it for a number of projects and also in my DB1 Robot. Of
course, I’ll keep you posted with more videos and articles.

Until then I suggest that you pick up your own NVIDIA Jetson
Nano Developer Kit and start playing with it yourself. It’s an
excellent low-cost introduction to the world of machine learning.

Resources
NVIDIA Jetson Nano Developer Kit – The main page from
8
NVIDIA.

microSD Card Image – Image with Ubuntu Linux 18.04 and

NVIDIA JetPack SDK (Large Download).

NVIDIA Jetson Nano Getting Started – Setup instructions

from NVIDIA.

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Etcher – A free SD and microSD card burner that works with

any operating system.

Jetson Nano Wiki – A wiki for the NVIDIA Jetson Nano.

NVIDIA Developers Blog – Article introducing the Jetson

Nano Developer Kit.

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Summary

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Article Name Getting Started with the NVIDIA Jetson

Nano Developer Kit

Description The NVIDIA Jetson Nano brings the cost of

AI research and development down to a
level that almost anyone can afford. This
99-dollar kit lets you develop cutting-edge
AI applications. In this article, I will setup
the NVIDIA Jetson Nano.

Author DroneBot Workshop

Publisher Name DroneBot Workshop

Publisher Logo

DroneBot Workshop June 1, 2019 Electronics, Tutorial

8 Comments

← Using BIG Stepper Motors with Arduino

8 Analog Feedback Servo Motor →

If you have a question...

Comments about this article are encouraged and appreciated.
However, due to the large volume of comments that I receive, it

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may not be possible for me to answer you directly here on the

website.

You are much more likely to get answers to technical

questions by making a post on the DroneBot Workshop
Forum. Your post will be seen not only by myself, but by a large
group of tech enthusiasts who can quickly answer your
question. You may also add code samples, images and videos
to your forum posts.

Having said that, please feel free to leave constructive

comments here. Your input is always welcome. Please note that
all comments may be held for moderation.

Join the discussion

8 COMMENTS   Oldest


John A Vukas 
2 years ago

So, is this going to be replacing the raspberry, or will

you still be using it along with the Jetson ?
0
Reply

Sean O'Connor 
2 years ago

Is youtube playback smooth or not smooth? I saw

one video
8 where is was said to be (and seemed) a
bit jittery.

Also just randomly:

https://discourse.processing.org/t/flaw-in-current-
neural-networks/11512

https://github.com/S6Regen/RP_AUTO_RESNET

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0
Reply

Carter 
2 years ago

Great blog. “The next time we work with the Jetson

I’ll be going through Hello AI World in detail…”
Looking forward to this – when can we expect it – or
did I miss it? Thanks!
4
Reply

Dietmar 
1 year ago

“Get the NVIDIA JetPack SDK and Ubuntu Linux

image.” “Burn the image to a microSD card.” This
will not work on a Microsoft 10 notebook, because
the downloaded file “sdkmanager_0.9.14-
4961_amd64.deb” can not be burned with the
“balenaEtcher-Portable-1.5.56.exe”. It can not
handle “.deb” files. The other option to set up the
SDK on a Linux computer and transfer it via USB as
shown in a video on youtube, need a Linux platform
to run. Looking forward to the next lesson regarding
the Jetpack….until then I will keep the Nano back in
the package. Without the “opencv” function, it is not
much… Read more »
0
Reply

Syed Usama Ali 

1 year ago

Hello, can you please give us an in-depth tutorial as

to how we can use it for image recognition or
character identification
0
Reply

8
Anibal Rodriguez 
1 year ago

Hi DBW,

Just got my Jetson AI, very excited to put it to work

on a very specific project. At this moment I’m ion my
training wheels.

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Best,

Anibal
0
Reply

Joe 
7 months ago

Enjoyed the introduction to the Jetsto-nano. I have a

nano 2gb and it did not recognize the sudo
command to obtain the cuda samples. Search inter-
net with no luck. Any suggestions would be helpful.
0
Reply

John McClelland 
7 months ago

Very good video to set up Jetson. I am not able to

find your Hello AI World YouTube. Is it out?
2
Reply

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