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Using the Nvidia Jetson accelerator#

Supported Jetson accelerators#

  • Jetson TX2

  • Jetson Xavier NX

  • Jetson Orin AGX 32GB

Every Jetson shipped with our robots uses a specific version of Jetpack, along with some system patches and the software provided by PAL Robotics. It is recommended not to reinstall the Jetsons with different Jetpacks, as this might create issues with the hardware.

Good practices#

The following are the good practices to follow while working with Jetson:

  • Most Jetsons have limited space on their hard drives. Conduct periodic cleanup to remove unnecessary files, logs, and temporary data to free up storage space.

  • Jetsons are connected to the robot or their internal router directly via an Ethernet cable. You can ensure proper and reliable communication traffic by following these guidelines:

    • If multiple programs need to access a topic published from within the Jetson, it is highly recommended to relay the topic inside the control PC. Then, use that relayed topic from the control PC for your programs.

      Note

      This is necessary because for every subscription, ROS internally creates a copy of communication, which means the network loses some bandwidth.

    • If you want to visualize the topics published from within the Jetson, always use the relayed topic of the control PC from outside the robot to be able to visualize the data.

  • Always follow proper shutdown procedures for the Jetson to prevent potential data corruption or hardware issues. Running sudo shutdown now is a recommended way to shut down the Jetson before turning off the power.

General troubleshooting#

  • Make sure that the Jetson is connected to the robot via an Ethernet cable

  • Check if you can ping the Jetson from the robot’s control PC, by running ping -w3 jetson from the robot’s main PC

  • Check if your Jetson can ping your robot’s control PC, by running ping -w3 control from the Jetson

  • Check if your robot has connection to internet, by running ping -w3 8.8.8.8 from the robot’s PC. Then, check if you can access to the internet from the Jetson, by running ping -w3 8.8.8.8 from the Jetson

  • Check if the the DNS is set properly, by running ping -w3 www.google.com from both the robot’s PC and the Jetson

  • To check that the Jetson operating system is correctly updated, check the logs inside Jetson by running journalctl --boot -u system_pal_packages_updater.service

  • If you have issues connecting to the robot’s PC, check that the cat /etc/resolv.conf has IP 10.68.0.1, so it can use the robot’s DNS server.