NVIDIA Jetson TK1

[sparkytwd]

Originally Posted by jesseclayton

Note that SATA disks require a fairly precise 12V, so you shouldn't be using voltages at those ranges if you will power SATA hard drives from the Jetson TK1.

I believe most SATA SSDs require only 5v, such as the Samsung Pro 840.

If you want to be extra sure, you can cut the yellow wire on a standard molex adapter. 12V is generally made available for running the spindle motor, which even assuming a stable 12v, is a bad idea on a robot.

[NotInControl]

I am having one of my buddies ship me their TK1 dev board so I can test the Jetson TK1 with the Alpha/Beta hardware I have.

We used a beagleBone running openCV this year for vision in auto (it worked very well). With a 320x240 image we were getting 20fps with about 100ms lag behind real-time (not very noticeable, and very well within the requirements of hot goal detection).

Hopefully, I can get around to this, but I am going to recompile openCV with CUDA support, and see how much more we can do with the extra compute power.

I also wanted to take the same binary I had on the beagleBone, and run it directly on the RoboRio for comparative purposes, but haven't gotten around to that as of yet. But that is coming as well.

I am going to see how well this 12V board integrates with the RoboRio and new PDP. I may also end up putting it on a buck-boost supply so that when the robot dips to voltage, this guy doesn't loose its power. But I will only do that if other tests prove it is necessary. (my hunch right now is some boost supply will be necessary knowing how low our robots dip in Voltage).

The drivetrain I am running for these test is a 8 wheel (Traction Colson), 4-cim, single speed, so it should be possible to get the battery to dip to 8V instantaneously during normal driving.

I will report back what ever I can, as soon as I can. I just wanted to make the community aware that someone with Beta hardware is testing this out.

I am not sure I will buy one of these yet, it also looks like NVIDIA plans to release an upgrade to the TK1 early 2015 (maybe the new board can support 2015 build season?!).

-Kevin

[Gdeaver]

If this board is used for auto only voltage dip should not be a problem for most teams. However, seeing our voltage logs and some other teams this year the voltage drops would most likely be a problem for many teams. There are many automotive ATX style power supplies available. Not cheap and come with a standard ATX plug. 6 - 24 volt range is very common and they are designed to take a hard engine cranking in an automotive environment.

[NotInControl]

Thanks for the info. I personally probably wouldn't go the automotive ATX route. Those are typically used for CAR PC/infotainment systems with heavy power usages, which is why they are so expensive. I would be surprised if you could find one under 100 watts which is overkill for this application.

I was thinking more along the lines of a custom power circuit with one of these at the heart, if power conditioning was required (I think is will be).

$10 - http://www.digikey.com/product-detai...PBF-ND/3074261


$11 - http://www.digikey.com/product-detai...FCT-ND/3885241

I haven't down selected between the two, or even done an exhaustive search, but these two chips should provide more then enough power to support the Jetson TK1 at full performance on an FRC bot.

When I get around to it, and have a time to compare the features of these and other chips I will pick one, but at the moment I am leaning more towards the LED driver chip.

This is a more pocket friendly and application specific alternative then an ATX power supply

- Kevin

[Gdeaver]

Those are raw chips. Can you as a DIY project buy the BOM and make the boards? If you have boards made is the cost and time less than a COTS automotive power supply? There seams to be a void with small modules at about .5 amp and cheap and > 10 amp and expensive in the buck boost auto motive grade modules. I found a 12 volt 10amp module for 57$ singe output but nothing less till the low power stuff at 8$. If you are going to make your own, TI has some reference designs with everything figured out and ready to make. I think most teams would just want to buy the power supply and not get in to custom made power supplies.

[NotInControl]

Originally Posted by Gdeaver

Those are raw chips. Can you as a DIY project buy the BOM and make the boards? If you have boards made is the cost and time less than a COTS automotive power supply? There seams to be a void with small modules at about .5 amp and cheap and > 10 amp and expensive in the buck boost auto motive grade modules. I found a 12 volt 10amp module for 57$ singe output but nothing less till the low power stuff at 8$. If you are going to make your own, TI has some reference designs with everything figured out and ready to make. I think most teams would just want to buy the power supply and not get in to custom made power supplies.

Im sorry if what I am doing is not clear. Below is my approach so it is clear what I will try to accomplish, and the information I will try to make available to the community during my efforts.

The Beta Test equipment comes with a Voltage Regulator Module (VRM), it has four different outputs simultaneously. The VRM supports 2 channels of 5V@2A, 2 channels of 5V@500mA, 2 channels of 12V@2A and 2 channels of 12V@500mA simultaneously.

It can maintain constant output with input voltages ranging from 4-24VDC. The VRM gets 12V input power from a dedicated port on the 2015 power distribution panel. I believe most teams will use the VRM for many of their applications. I am not sure if you were aware of this module.

The only reason I would venture into the DIY route for power conditioning is:
1. running the TK1 at 12V@2amp was limiting full performance of the GPU
2. and it is not possible to sink 4amps from the VRM by combining output pins in parallel as is possible with other embedded devices (I need to confirm this with CTRE first). (Even if this is possible, it may be illegal to do against 2015 FRC rules)

I was jumping the gun by saying that for the very few teams, that may need to run this guy using full 60W performance, as was indicated by previous posts in this thread, (i.e running SATA drives and such) there is a way out by making your own Buck-boost converter. If I got that far with my very limited time, I proposed a solution I would take based on my comfort level with electronics. There are many DIY plans available on the net already for DIY buck-boost regulators. But I think a very small number of teams will need to go that route

I believe running the TK1 at 2amps using the 2015 VRM provided in the kit of parts will be more than sufficient for most teams if they wanted to venture and use this board for off-board processing. The small percentage of other teams needing to push the board to the limits can venture into the DIY route, or buy their own power supply. I will make available what ever I do with regards to this board during the off-season. My previous statements of "I believe some sort of Boost converter would be required" if it wasn't clear, was assuming the user required full performance power and was drawing more than 2amps continuous from the VRM, in which case the VRM could no longer work and another solution is required.

Hopefully this clears it up for everyone.
Regards,
Kevin

[Gdeaver]

Wasn't aware of the CRE specs. There probably will not be that many teams Pushing vision on board to the limit and the ones who do can find there own solution. I don't think CRE needs to supply a solution that supports a small population of teams.

[Foster]

Thanks Kevin for the posts with the info about the CTR power unit. I'm interested to see what your current levels are when the TK1 is at full load.

[marshall]

This chart of power draw for vision tasks might also be useful given what teams are likely to use the TK1 for:

http://elinux.org/Tegra/OpenCV_Perfo...visi on_tasks

[adciv]

Side note, for fairly low cost you can buy these ATX PSUs. Sure, the smallest is 80w, but they are small and they are low cost. We ran a Kinect on this in 2013. I plan to reuse it with the new boards once I have a chance to start playing with them.
http://www.mini-box.com/DC-DC

[sparkytwd]

Originally Posted by adciv

Side note, for fairly low cost you can buy these ATX PSUs. Sure, the smallest is 80w, but they are small and they are low cost. We ran a Kinect on this in 2013. I plan to reuse it with the new boards once I have a chance to start playing with them.
http://www.mini-box.com/DC-DC

Keep in mind not all of those converters can handle sub 12v input. You need to select one that explicitly mentions either a low (usually 6v) acceptable range or boost design.

[marshall]

Would sir care for a more robust design fit for a FIRST team?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...d_i=B00MHX6V88

http://www.amazon.com/Acer-Chromeboo...+chromebook+13

Supposedly there will be an OEM/Educational variant as well that will have 4GB of RAM but only 16GB of storage which will fall midway between the above two on the price scale and make me very happy.

[Kevin Watson]

If your team purchased a Jetson board, how is it going? Have you done anything cool with it yet? Do you need help? Feedback would be greatly appreciated.

-Kevin

[marshall]

Originally Posted by Kevin Watson

If your team purchased a Jetson board, how is it going? Have you done anything cool with it yet? Do you need help? Feedback would be greatly appreciated.

-Kevin

We have a couple. The mentors have been playing with them so far but we're going to hand one over to some students soon (our season just started). It's a nice development board. There are stability issues with running X11 on it in our experience. We've flashed it a few times and the process is painfully slow to update them with a clean image. It boots fast enough for a FRC team to use but it is linux so at some point it's going to get annoyed with being hard rebooted and will run fsck when you least expect it.

It doesn't do USB 3.0 by default, that requires some bit fiddling but not a big deal.

OpenCV is really fast on it, particularly for our needs. Nvidia has just released a new version of the CUDA software kit as well so there will be more updates coming soon probably.

[matan129]

Originally Posted by jesseclayton

FRC Teams:

As some of you may know, NVIDIA visited the FIRST Championships in St. Louis this year.

While NVIDIA has been involved in various ways in the past, this was my first experience with FIRST.

I was completely blown away. I was amazed by the technical excellence, the competition, the cooperation, the professionalism. Having been in the tech industry for almost 18 years, I can tell you that FIRST embodies the best aspects of science and technology.

One of the reasons NVIDIA was at Championships was to show off the new Jetson TK1 developer platform. It’s a small, low-power, fully functional computer. Great for computer vision for robotics. You can learn more about it here: http://developer.nvidia.com/jetson-tk1.

Other relevant information, including list of compatible cameras, is here: http://elinux.org/Jetson_TK1

We thought it would be fun for FRC teams to show off how they would use Jetson TK1 to solve this previous year’s challenges, and share their work with the rest of the community. NVIDIA is offering the Jetson TK1 for $130 (normally $192) to FRC teams. If you are interested please fill out the form here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JetsonTK1-First

Edit: The discount will be available until July 12, 2014.

Thanks

Jesse Clayton
Product Manager, Mobile Embedded | NVIDIA

Is there any way to get the jetson in the discounter price even though it has ended?