If using your own Jetson board, Yahboom JetCobot cannot start normally. Please read the following tutorial carefully.

1. Background introduction

Note: In order to ensure that JetCobot car can start normally, users need to ensure that the JetPack version in their Jetson board system is consistent with the Jetpack version in the ROSMASETR X3 car system provided by Yahboom.

If you did not purchase Yahboom's Jetson board, when using other brands of Jetson board, maybe you will find that JetCobot cannot start normally.

The following tutorial provides a detailed solution to this problem.

2. Jetson series board and boot media description

1. About Jetson series board:

   • Jetson Nano board: Use a U disk as the boot medium.

   • Jetson Orin Nano/Jetson Orin NX board: Use a SSD as boot media.

      

2. About Jetpack version in the boot media system:

   • The U disk(For Jetson NANO) included in the JetCobot robot kit has been written with a system image file dedicated to the JetCobot car. This system image file include JetPack 4.6

   • The SSD(For Jetson ORIN NANO) included in the JetCobot robot kit has been written with a system image file dedicated to the JetCobot car. This system image file include JetPack 5.1.1

   • The SSD(For Jetson ORIN NX) included in the JetCobot robot kit has been written with a system image file dedicated to the JetCobot car. This system image file include JetPack 5.1.3

      

3. Check the JetPack version on your own Jetson series board

Your Jetson motherboard currently has two cases.

Case-1: You can boot your Jetson board normally, and enter the command terminal normally.

• Start your Jetson board, enter the operating system and command terminal.

• Open the terminal, enter the command jtop and press Enter, jtop will display a real-time updated system status page.

• After the jtop page is displayed, click the menu page 6 INFO with the mouse.

  At this time, the page will display the version information of components such as Jetpack, CUDA, cuDNN, OpenCV, TensorRT, etc.

   

  Take Jetson Nano as an example, as shown below. My current Jetpack system version is 4.6

  

   

• If the jtop tool is not installed in the system, you can refer to the following command to install it.

  # Install pip3
  sudo apt-get update
  sudo apt install python3-pip
  # Install jtop
  sudo -H pip3 install -U jetson-stats
  # Run jtop service
  sudo systemctl restart jetson_stats.service
  # Restart the system
  reboot
  

Case-2: There are no system files in your own U disk or SSD. Currently, you cannot start the Jetson board normally and enter the command terminal.

• Please read following 【4.3 Sections】

4. Jetson Nano board startup steps

Case-1: The Jetpack version of your Jetson board is the same as the Jetpack version of Yahboom robot car.

• NVIDAI officail Jetson NANO board: Remove the TF card on the core board, directly plug in the U disk provided by Yahboom, and turn on the power switch to start robot car normally.

  According to the test, if your Jetson NANO board contains jetpack4.6/4.6.1/4.6.3, directly plug in the U disk provided by Yahboom, robot car can be started normally.

• Unofficial Jetson NANO board(with EMMC): Please refer to the tutorial 《Write EMMC Boot》, follow the tutorial to write the universal boot to the Jetson NANO SUB board, then plug in the U disk, robot car can start normally.

Case-2: The Jetpack version for your Jetson board is not the same as the Jetpack version for Yahboom robot car.

• NVIDAI officail Jetson NANO board: Please refer to the tutorial 《Write official system image (SDK)》to write jetpack 4.6/4.6.1/4.6.3 to the Jeston NANO board.

  Then, remove the TF card on the core board, directly plug in the U disk provided by Yahboom, and turn on the power switch to start robot car normally.

• Unofficial Jetson NANO board(with EMMC): Please refer to the tutorial 《Write EMMC Boot》to write the universal boot to the Jetson NANO SUB board, then plug in the U disk, robot car can start normally.

Case-3: You can't check the JetPack version on your own Jetson series board

• NVIDAI officail Jetson NANO board: Please refer to the tutorial 《Write official system image (SDK)》to write jetpack 4.6/4.6.1/4.6.3 to the Jeston NANO board.

  Then, remove the TF card on the core board, directly plug in the U disk provided by Yahboom, and turn on the power switch to start robot car normally.

• Unofficial Jetson NANO board(with EMMC): Please refer to the tutorial 《Write EMMC system》to write jetpack 4.6/4.6.1/4.6.3 to the Jeston NANO board.

  Then, please refer to the tutorial 《Write EMMC boot》to write the universal boot to the Jetson NANO SUB board.

  Next, plug in the U disk, robot car can start normally.

Write official system image (SDK)

1. Preparation

• PC Software

Ubuntu 18.04 system

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Yahboom has provided Ubuntu 18.04 virtual machine images and has installed SDKmanager. Users can download the virtual machine files directly on Yahboom's website.
Use VMware software to open the virtual machine.

Virtual machine username: yahboom
Password: yahboom

You can also install SDKmanager on your own Ubuntu system according to the following method.

1)Open NVIDIA's jetpack download website：SDK Manager | NVIDIA Developer

2)Register/log in to NVIDIA account.

3)In Ubuntu18.04 virtual machine system, click to download SDK Manager.

Input following command to enter the path of the .deb file you just downloaded.

(For example, i download it to the Downloads directory here.)

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cd Downloads/

Input following command to install SDK Manager.

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sudo dpkg -i sdkmanager_2.2.0-12021_amd64.deb

• Hardware

Card reader and TF card: TF card needs to be formatted before writing into the system.

Jumper cap: Short-circuit FC REC and GND pins (enter flash mode), short-circuit DC enable (J48).

DC power adapter: Use jumper cap to short-circuit DC enable (J48) when using this power supply method.

MicroUSB data cable: Used to connect to a computer to transfer data.

2.Format TF card

It is recommended to use DiskGenius software to directly format the disk partition of the SD card and generate an exfat partition.

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Only show one way to format the partition. You can also use other software.
The computer's built-in disk management can also perform the corresponding operation.

2.1 Delete all partitions

Download DiskGenius software link: https://www.diskgenius.com/download.php

For this operation, you must select the disk corresponding to the SD card. If you select the wrong drive letter, data on other disks will be lost.

Click "Confirm" to change.

2.2 Create a new partition

After the above operations, the USB drive will show all the space on your computer.

2.3 Install SD card

Insert the formatted SD card into the TF card slot on the Jetson NANO board.

3. Virtual Machine

3.1 Virtual Machine capacity expansion

The virtual machine image we provide needs to be expanded to 100G.

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If the capacity is not expanded, writing to the system may fail!

3.2 Allocate space

Open the "GParted" software in system.

If you use your own Ubuntu system. Input following command to install "GParted" tool

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sudo apt install gparted

As shown below. Right-click and choose "Resize/Move"

Then, system will display the interface shown below. Drag the border of the movable space to the far right.

After completing the above operations, close the "GParted" tool.

3.3 Connect virtual machine

After using the DC power adapter to power the device, connect the microUSB cable to the computer.

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If the indicator light on the Jetson NANO board does not light up when DC power is supplied, you can try plugging and unplugging the DC port (number 4 in the figure below).

After connecting to the computer, a pop-up window "New USB device detected" will appear on the computer interface.

Click the "Connect to virtual machine" option to connect.

Here is another way to connect a USB device to a virtual machine:

4. Write system by SDK Manager

Open the system "SDK Manager" software and log in to your account.

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# Since the new version of SDKmanager cannot select the older version of jetpack, we can use the following command to start the old version of SDKmanager and select the required jetpack version   
sdkmanager --archived-versions  

If when logging in to your account, the virtual machine system pops up a web page showing an invalid request. As shown below.

Solution: After updating the software version as shown in the figure below, log in to the account again.

4.1 Select Jetson board model

4.2 Options

STEP1

Select the JetPack version. Here we take version 4.6.3 as an example.

STEP2

As shown in the figure below, select the corresponding option.

You need to enter the password to confirm, and follow the system prompts to complete it.

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If the system prompts that the disk space is insufficient when executing this step, we need to check whether the system disk space is insufficient, and continue to expand the virtual machine disk space.

STEP3

Wait for the system to download and install.

You will need to enter your username and password during the installation.

According to the above steps, you can complete writing Jetpack4.6.3 to the Jetson NANO board.

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If writing fails, you can follow the tutorial again and try a few more times.

5. Start up Jetson NANO board

Frist, unplug the data cable and DC power adapter that connect the Jetson NANO board to the computer.

Then, unplug the jumper cap that shorts the FC REC and GND pins on Jetson NANO board.

Boot the system: If the DC power adapter is used for power supply (you need to use a jumper cap to short-circuit the DC enable (J48)), connect the monitor to confirm whether the system can boot normally.

As shown below. If the display shows the following, it means the system can start normally.

Write EMMC system

• Hardware

1)Jumper cap: short-circuit FC REC and GND pins (enter flash mode).

2)DC power adapter.

3)MicroUSB data cable: connect to computer to transfer data.

• Software

Ubuntu 18.04 system

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Yahboom has provided Ubuntu 18.04 virtual machine images and has installed SDKmanager. Users can download the virtual machine files directly on Yahboom's website.
Use VMware software to open the virtual machine.

Virtual machine username: yahboom
Password: yahboom

You can also install SDKmanager on your own Ubuntu system according to the following method.

1)Open NVIDIA's jetpack download website：SDK Manager | NVIDIA Developer

2)Register/log in to NVIDIA account.

3)In Ubuntu18.04 virtual machine system, click to download SDK Manager.

Input following command to enter the path of the .deb file you just downloaded.

(For example, i download it to the Downloads directory here.)

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cd Downloads/

Input following command to install SDK Manager.

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sudo dpkg -i sdkmanager_2.2.0-12021_amd64.deb

• Write Step

Please refer to 4. Write system by SDK Manager in 《Write official system image (SDK)》.

Write EMMC boot

Important: Once you have written this boot file into the EMMC of the Jetson NANO SUB board according to the following tutorial, you can directly insert the U disk in the robot car into the Jetson NANO SUB board (or write the car image file we provide into your own U disk).

Then, you can directly start up robot car. Don't worry about the Jetpack version.

1. Make Jetson Nano connect to virtual machine

• Prepare the Jetson Nano SUB board, jumper cap, display, mouse and keyboard, etc.
• As shown in the figure below, let Jetson Nano SUB enter the system REC flashing mode.

Connect the jumper cap to the FC REC and GND pins, that is, the second and third pins of the carrier board. As shown below.

Connect the power supply and insert the microUSB data cable.

Since the jumper cap has been connected to the FC REC and GND pins in the previous step, the Jetson NANO board will automatically enter the REC flashing mode after powering on.

Generally, after connecting the Jetson NANO motherboard and the computer via a Micro USB data cable, the following window will pop up on the computer.

We need to select the device to connect to the virtual machine.

2.Start write boot file

• Please transfer the Jetson_Boot_USB.tar.gz file in the Yahboom tutorials to the Ubuntu 18.04 system and open the terminal to run the decompression command.

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tar xzvf Jetson_Boot_USB.tar.gz

As shown below.

• After extracted, input following command to enter the Jetson_Boot_USB folder.

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cd Jetson_Boot_USB/
ls

As shown below.

• Input following command to write the EMMC boot file.

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sudo ./flash.sh -r jetson-nano-devkit-emmc mmcblk0p1

As shown below.

• Wait for the file to be written. If successful, the system will prompt "The target t210ref has been flashed successfully. Reset the board to boot from internal eMMC."

As shown below.

If an error message appears, please confirm whether the Jetson Nano SUB board is connected normally and enters the flashing mode.

Reconnect according to the first step. And try again.

After the write is completed, please unplug the jumper cap(FC REC and GND pins) of the Jetson Nano SUB, insert the U disk, and restart the Jetson NANO board.

Note: If you are using the virtual machine provided by Yahboom, which already contains the Jetson_Boot_USB file, you do not need to transfer it to the system again.

5. Jetson Orin Nano/Orin NX board start step

Case-1: The Jetpack version of your Jetson board is the same as the Jetpack version of Yahboom robot car.

• Plug in the SSD in the Yahboom car kit to start robot car.

Case-2: The Jetpack version for your Jetson board is not the same as the Jetpack version for Yahboom robot car. Or rou can't check the JetPack version on your own Jetson series board

• If you use Jetson ORIN NANO version. Please refer to 《SDKmanager write system》 to write JetPack 5.1.1 to Jetson ORIN NANO 8GB board.
• If you use Jetson ORIN NX version. Please refer to 《SDKmanager write system》 to write JetPack 5.1.3 to Jetson ORIN NX 16GB board.
• After successful writing, insert the SSD provided by Yahboom into the Jetson ORIN board, open the power switch of the robot car, robot car can start normally.

Write system by SDKmanager

1)Click the following NVIDIA jetpack download link in virtual machines(Ubuntu18.04 or 20.04).

SDK Manager | NVIDIA Developer

2)Register/log in to NVIDIA account.

3)Download SDK Manager, as shown below.

• Install SDK Manager

Input following command to enter the path of the .deb file you just downloaded.

(For example, i download it to the Downloads directory here.)

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cd Downloads/

Input following command to install SDK Manager.

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sudo dpkg -i sdkmanager_2.2.0-12021_amd64.deb

• Open the Ubuntu 18.04 virtual machines system and search for SDK. You can find SDKManager. Please open this file.

  As shown below

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#Since the new version of SDKmanager cannot select the older version of jetpack, you can use the following command to start the old version of SDKmanager and select the required jetpack version
sdkmanager --archived-versions  

As shown below, if the browser pops up an interface for logging in to your NVIDIA account, you can enter your username and password to log in.

• Make Ubuntu18.04 virtual machines to connect Jetson Orin NANO/Orin NX

Before that, we need to complete the following operations to make Jetson Orin Nano into the system REC flashing mode.

Connect the jumper cap to the FC REC and GND pins, that is, the second and third pins of the carrier board, as shown below.

1)Connect microUSB data cable on Jetson Orin NANO/Orin NX board.

2)Connect power supply cable on Jetson Orin NANO/Orin NX board.

3)Since the jumper cap has been connected to the FC REC and GND pins in the previous step, the Jetson Orin NANO/Orin NX board will automatically enter the REC flashing mode after powering on.

• In the SDKManager software of the Ubuntu 18.04 virtual machine system, select Target Hardware as Jetson Orin nano module(Or your Orin NX module).

  If you use Jetson ORIN NANO choose JetPack 5.1.1

  If you use Jetson ORIN NX choose JetPack 5.1.3

If Target Hardware shows "Not Connected", please confirm whether Jetson ORIN NANO/ORIN NX board has entered REC flashing mode and successfully connected to the virtual machine.

Make sure everything is OK and click "refresh".

Jetson Orin NANO is divided into two versions: 4GB/8GB. Please choose according to the actual situation.

If you are currently using 8GB, please select 8GB module (do not select developer).

If you are currently using 4G, please select 4G module.

Generally, after connecting the Orin board to the virtual machine, the system will automatically recognize it.

Click "CONTINUE".

• By default, Jetson OS and Jetson SDK Components are checked, which means the system and SDK are flashed. We can also select the system OS or software SDK separately, but before writing the software SDK separately, we need to ensure that the system OS has been flashed.

Keep the default file download path, choose agree license agreements. Click "CONTINUE" to proceed to the next step.

As shown below.

As shown below. Enter the password for the virtual machine.

At this time, SDKManager will first download the file to be written.

Wait for the file to be downloaded. Then, system will write to the system and SDK.

• After the system is written, power off the Jetson Orin board and remove the jumper cap between FC REC and GND.

  Connect the display, power on the Jetson Orin board, and check whether the Jetson Orin board can boot normally and enter the system.

If the Jetson Orin board can boot up normally and enter the system, you can disconnect the power supply.

Insert the SSD provided by Yahboom, install the Jetson Orin board on the car, turn on the power switch, and the car can start normally.

Note

• Before performing any write or system update operations, please back up the original important data on the Jetson board. Once written or updated, it cannot be restored.
• When writing the boot or system, make sure to use the tutorials and tools that match the motherboard model.
• If you encounter any problems during the startup process, please refer to the official NVIDIA documentation of the motherboard for troubleshooting and solutions.