Jetson Nano (again) - use in headless mode?

Digital ATV - The latest generation, cutting edge ATV - Please discuss it all here.
Forum rules
This forum is run by the BATC (British Amateur Television Club), it is service made freely available to all interested parties, please do not abuse this privilege.

Thank you
Post Reply
G8PEF
Posts: 176
Joined: Mon Oct 30, 2017 6:42 pm

Jetson Nano (again) - use in headless mode?

Post by G8PEF » Sat Jan 11, 2020 2:04 pm

OK, latest (last?, before I bin it) installment of my Jetson Nano saga....

Recap - Nano won't produce a picture on HDMI device (it used to, but the video was inverted, and picture shifted to the left, anyway, so not entirely useful)...

After my last posting, following a suggestion that the board may have misconfigured itelf, I said I was going to re-flash the SD card, connect a keyboard and a mouse, and try again... follwing that, I was going to flash a 'headless mode' version of the software into it, and see if I could talk to it via the USB port of my computer...

I have now tried the first option, with no luck, so am wrestling with headless mode... I don't understand how it works - im just trying to follow th instructions on NVidia's website, wich say:

Setup Steps

1) Unfold the paper stand and place inside the developer kit box.
2) Set the developer kit on top of the paper stand.
3) Insert the microSD card (with system image already written to it) into the slot on the underside of the Jetson Nano module.
4) Insert the 2-pin jumper across the 2-pin connector, J48, located next to the MIPI CSI camera connector. This enables the DC barrel power supply.
5) Connect your DC barrel jack power supply (5V/4A). The Jetson Nano Developer Kit will power on and boot automatically.
6) A green LED next to the Micro-USB connector will light as soon as the developer kit powers on. Wait about 30 seconds. Then connect the USB cable from the Micro USB port on the Jetson Nano Developer Kit to the USB port on your computer.

It then says that a server should be running on the Nano, which will allow you to login:

"Open the following link address : 192.168.55.1:8888 - The JupyterLab server running on the Jetson Nano will open up with a login prompt the first time."

I'm confused as to how the connection is established - should there not also be something that has to be unning on the local computer to tell it how to map the IP address and port that you enter into the browser, to a USB port?

I have tried exactly what it says on the website on both a W8.1 and a MacOS (old.. probably Lion, 10.7.1) and got timeouts on both.

Am I missing something, or is the Nano really now dead as a dead thing?
The green LED comes on when power is applied - the heatsink gets luke warm, too - and caps lock (etc) LEDs and mouse LEDs work OK. i have poked around the board wth a DMM, and the supply looks to be holding upat 5.2V; there is also a respectable 3.3V present in various places around the board.

EDIT: I meant to add a question: has anyone on here sucessfully downloaded and installed the headless mode software:
https://developer.download.nvidia.com/t ... e_20GB.zip
?

g0mjw
Posts: 2327
Joined: Sat Sep 20, 2014 9:15 am

Re: Jetson Nano (again) - use in headless mode?

Post by g0mjw » Sat Jan 11, 2020 2:45 pm

I don't know about USB headless mode but you seem to by trying something non-standard compared to the rest of us. My feeling is you are using an old monitor or television, that isn't compatible with the Nano. I think we have been round this loop before. I think the NAno is fine but you may be trying to use it with hardware that is not supported.

In this headless mode, perhaps it installs a driver, I have no idea (see below) but if it is it will be expecting a modern OS. Both the OS you mention below are now well out of date and although they will work, the USB drivers may not have been developed. I have not tried the link as it turned out to point to a 7 GB download. Searching for JupyterLab came up with Project Jupyter which does not look particularly relevant.

However, I do not understand why have you not just connected it via an Ethernet cable to your wired network? That's what everyone else does. Then it should, with the standard image, obtain an IP address from your router and then be accessible via SSH using putty or a similar program. You will have to log into the router to find the address it is allocated. If you do not have a wired network, it's not going to work as the Nano doesn't have a WiFi card as standard.

Mike

G8PEF
Posts: 176
Joined: Mon Oct 30, 2017 6:42 pm

Re: Jetson Nano (again) - use in headless mode?

Post by G8PEF » Sat Jan 11, 2020 8:43 pm

Thanks for your thoughts, Mike...
g0mjw wrote:
Sat Jan 11, 2020 2:45 pm
I don't know about USB headless mode but you seem to by trying something non-standard compared to the rest of us. My feeling is you are using an old monitor or television, that isn't compatible with the Nano. I think we have been round this loop before. I think the NAno is fine but you may be trying to use it with hardware that is not supported.
The headless mode 'image' file (yes, 7+GB download, 21GB when unzipped!) is the NVidia recommended version for their introductory course on AI & machine vision - I was trying this version out to attempt to determine whether the board was dead, or whether it was just the fact that it wouldn't talk to my ''old'' display devices, rather than with a view to actually using it in this mode for ATV (although I would like to work my way through the NVidia course at some point, too).

In terms of the 'elderly' nature of my display, I'll concede that the TV at 4years old is probably too old, but I have tried on Dell monitors at the office which are around 18 months old using both DisplayPort and HDMI inputs with no luck either - any idea how new the display needs to be to stand a chance of it working properly?
g0mjw wrote:
Sat Jan 11, 2020 2:45 pm
In this headless mode, perhaps it installs a driver, I have no idea (see below) but if it is it will be expecting a modern OS. Both the OS you mention below are now well out of date and although they will work, the USB drivers may not have been developed. I have not tried the link as it turned out to point to a 7 GB download. Searching for JupyterLab came up with Project Jupyter which does not look particularly relevant.
Ah, ok, so the OS should just know that an IP address /could/ be living on a USB port, not only on a normal wired/wireless network adaptor?
As I understand it, JupyterLab Server is sort of a Python IDE/workflow manager - the thing that the NVidia course revolves around... Not really relevant to our normal usage, as you say.

g0mjw wrote:
Sat Jan 11, 2020 2:45 pm
However, I do not understand why have you not just connected it via an Ethernet cable to your wired network? That's what everyone else does. Then it should, with the standard image, obtain an IP address from your router and then be accessible via SSH using putty or a similar program. You will have to log into the router to find the address it is allocated. If you do not have a wired network, it's not going to work as the Nano doesn't have a WiFi card as standard.
As mentioned above, I was doing this as a sort of last ditch attempt to determine if the nano was booting - however, if the Laptop isn't up to the task of talking to to nano via USB, then I'm no further on...

Bear with me on this, as networking and Windows stuff is not my strong point :(
I don't have ready access to a wired network, but I can dig a router/switch out of storage if necessary, to try... So if I understand you correctly, if I set up a standalone router with DHCP enabled and then use putty (or something similar) to do an SSH connection to the address given out to the nano, I should be able to log in to the nano? What username/password is the default for a newly flashed SD card (IIRC, I have revision 32.2.3 of the software - it's whatever was the latest a couple of weeks before Christmas).

Many thanks for any further advice you can offer.

John

AdrianH
Posts: 87
Joined: Thu Jul 18, 2019 2:46 pm

Re: Jetson Nano (again) - use in headless mode?

Post by AdrianH » Sat Jan 11, 2020 9:38 pm

I know this may not help as not Jetson but.

Within the Pluto SDR which is basically a Linux box, there is a config file that sets it's own IP and that of the host computer when connected via USB. In the case of the Pluto it becomes 192.168.2.1 and the computer it is plugged into the usb interface becomes 192.168.2.10. I know this works out of the box on my Ubuntu 18.04 Linux install I use and also with my windows 7 machine. I would therefore expect something similar on the Jetson?

I would guess you are aware of the Jetson Nano forum at https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/board/371/
perhaps there are a few answers for you on that.

Happy new year.

Adrian

g0mjw
Posts: 2327
Joined: Sat Sep 20, 2014 9:15 am

Re: Jetson Nano (again) - use in headless mode?

Post by g0mjw » Sun Jan 12, 2020 7:52 am

Hi John,

An 18 month old monitor should be fine. I am thinking of ones 10 years old using the older standards. Seems like something is not right. 99% of all electronics problems are due to power supply, but we have ruled this out. SD cards can cause issues and one has to have the right one, I assume you ruled that out too. If the module is not properly seated it won't work either, but I think you checked this. It's looking like it's of the Norwegian Blue variety.

On the wired network, you should think about getting one, it doesn't have to be large or costly but WiFi can fail when presented by many watts of 2.4/5.6 GHz and it's also not great for sending high bandwidth video transport streams or multicast around the shack. It's also a heck of a lot easier to fix this sort of problem. The Nano does not have WiFi and only works with a limited number of adaptors. I know as I tried it with unreliable results.

Mike

G8PEF
Posts: 176
Joined: Mon Oct 30, 2017 6:42 pm

Re: Jetson Nano (again) - use in headless mode?

Post by G8PEF » Fri Jan 17, 2020 10:04 pm

AdrianH wrote:
Sat Jan 11, 2020 9:38 pm
I know this may not help as not Jetson but.

Within the Pluto SDR which is basically a Linux box, there is a config file that sets it's own IP and that of the host computer when connected via USB. In the case of the Pluto it becomes 192.168.2.1 and the computer it is plugged into the usb interface becomes 192.168.2.10. I know this works out of the box on my Ubuntu 18.04 Linux install I use and also with my windows 7 machine. I would therefore expect something similar on the Jetson?

I would guess you are aware of the Jetson Nano forum at https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/board/371/
perhaps there are a few answers for you on that.

Happy new year.

Adrian
g0mjw wrote:
Sun Jan 12, 2020 7:52 am
Hi John,

An 18 month old monitor should be fine. I am thinking of ones 10 years old using the older standards. Seems like something is not right. 99% of all electronics problems are due to power supply, but we have ruled this out. SD cards can cause issues and one has to have the right one, I assume you ruled that out too. If the module is not properly seated it won't work either, but I think you checked this. It's looking like it's of the Norwegian Blue variety.

On the wired network, you should think about getting one, it doesn't have to be large or costly but WiFi can fail when presented by many watts of 2.4/5.6 GHz and it's also not great for sending high bandwidth video transport streams or multicast around the shack. It's also a heck of a lot easier to fix this sort of problem. The Nano does not have WiFi and only works with a limited number of adaptors. I know as I tried it with unreliable results.

Mike
Hi, Adrian and Mike

(Belated) Happy New Year to you both!

Adrian - Thanks for the info on Pluto USB networking; that may well come in very handy soon - and if I ever get to connect to the jetson and explore the drectory hierarchy, I'll let you know if there's any similarity...

Yes, I signed up to the Nvidia developer forums a while ago, when I first got the Nano - I did initially ask on there about the problem, but the answers I received didn't shed any light on the problem. I then hd a problem whereby wasn't able to log in to any of Nvidias servers and I couldn't get the password reset thing to work properly, so I gave up for a while.

Mike - I have reseated the module a couple of times (and 'air-duster'ed the connector out, with no change, The SD cards are Sandisk Ultras, so should be OK (the same type haven't given me any problems in my GoPro at any resolution and frame rate I've tried, if thats any guide).

On the network front, I've managed to dig out a router, and despite a bit of trouble, initially getting my laptop to connect to the admin page, I have, tonight, seen that the nano /is/ being allocated an IP address by the router; and the router lists its name as 'jetson-nano, so there is obviously some level of comms taking place.
I can ping it, and if I try to SSH (from a terminal window) to the IP listed, by typing 'ssh 192.168.0.101' (no port specified), I get a request for a password, but everything I've tried has returned a 'Permission denied, please try again' message.

EDIT: the above response is with the 'headless' firmware in the nano - if I put the 'normal' firmware in, the response to my 'ssh 192.168.0.101' command is: 'ssh: connect to host 192.168.0.101 port 22: Connection refused'

This is where I'm now stuck, as I have no idea what the password is; Have you any idea what it should be, Mike? Or am I doing something fundamentally wrong?

AdrianH
Posts: 87
Joined: Thu Jul 18, 2019 2:46 pm

Re: Jetson Nano (again) - use in headless mode?

Post by AdrianH » Fri Jan 17, 2020 10:47 pm

Do you know if you need to be 'root' or another name when logging in to the nano as I would expect you would be using ssh root@192.168.0.101, worth a shot.

Adrian

ps, doing a search for logging into jetson nano headless I found this
https://www.jetsonhacks.com/2019/08/21/ ... ess-setup/

That suggests you could login via another PC connected via usb mand a serial terminal.

But it goes on to say:-
Once you know the IP address of the Jetson, you can then SSH into it. The command is:

$ ssh <account name>@<ipaddress>

An example:

$ ssh jetsonhacks@10.0.1.21

You should now be connected to the Jetson.


So it does suggest you need to know the login name?

g0mjw
Posts: 2327
Joined: Sat Sep 20, 2014 9:15 am

Re: Jetson Nano (again) - use in headless mode?

Post by g0mjw » Fri Jan 17, 2020 11:32 pm

Yes! It's working. You just need the login name. There isn't a default one with that image. I set mine up with a keyboard and screen and that really should have worked for you. You can do it via the debug port of the board but really you need to get it going with a monitor.

Here is how to do the serial setup.

https://www.jetsonhacks.com/2019/08/21/ ... ess-setup/

Mike

G8PEF
Posts: 176
Joined: Mon Oct 30, 2017 6:42 pm

Re: Jetson Nano (again) - use in headless mode?

Post by G8PEF » Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:10 am

Thanks, both - at least I now have an idea of how to proceed.... watch this space, lol

I might get a couple of hours to 'explore' today, but if not, it might be next weekend before I'm able to investigate any further.

Mike, when you boot the nano from cold, with a monitor, mouse and keyboard attached, how long does it take to produce the flash screen and to get to a login/desktop? I note from the link that both you and Adrian sent that it mentions that theres a 45 second delay before the Nano is ready to accept serial input - it this the typical time you may have to wait for a display to appear when not in headless mode? (I just want to rule out my not having waited long enough for something to happen on my monitor(s); I don't think it's lkely as I've left it for ages on more than one occasion - however, the atricle also mentions that if you are too quick off the mark, or interrupt the boot process, that may cause problems with later boots not completing. Maybe I should reflash the SD card (again) now I know that /something/ is happening in there...

John
G8PEF

g0mjw
Posts: 2327
Joined: Sat Sep 20, 2014 9:15 am

Re: Jetson Nano (again) - use in headless mode?

Post by g0mjw » Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:23 am

Hi John

I is quite a long time with a fresh image and a fast card. There are issues with some SD cards too. The first one I tried was so slow as to be unusable. It was a fast card from Sandisk but not fast enough. I am now using a Sandisk EVO64.

You should wipe the card completely and start from fresh. Get rid of any partitions that will have been created in previous runs.

Mike

Post Reply

Return to “DATV - Digital ATV”