Jetson on Nico Maas

balenaOS on the Advantech AIR-020X

Fri, 10 Mar 2023 17:20:44 +0000

Last week I posted the review of the Advantech AIR-020X with which I used to create the labSentinel 2 system.

I remarked that the hardware was great, however the software support and update capability of the system was severly lagging behind for an “industrial floor, always on” type of machine. Luckily, thats exactly what balena has been created for.

Even better, their environment already support Nvidia Jetson devices - also Nvidia Jetson Xavier NX modules. With the AIR-020X being a really nice carrierboard (and housing) for this module, I went to work.

Advantech AIR-020X Review

Sun, 05 Mar 2023 12:33:21 +0000

Normally, I am not getting review units. This is due to the fact that I am only hosting this small weblog, along some conference talks - and most companies would probably be better off to send their units along someone with a reach of Linus Tech Tips, or similar.

On the other hand - when I get the possibility to do a review, it can be a bit worrisome for the companies as well, as I am a very honest person. I have been working in tech for some time now and had the honor to build stuff which went to space - and came back to tell the tale. I know what I want in a unit - and what could be a problem.

USB C power for the Nvidia Jetson Nano 4 GB dev board

Mon, 17 Oct 2022 08:00:00 +0000

The best way to power a Jetson Nano 4 GB dev board is by using a center positive, 5 V and at least 4 A barrel connector type power adapter. However, these are often bulky and not the best travel companion - while USB C power bricks are becoming more common and the relevant USB C sockets are getting build into nearly every device (maybe yours too, Apple?).

So I set out to build a USB C power adapter for the Jetson board.

labSentinel 2

Mon, 19 Sep 2022 09:35:01 +0000

About nearly a year ago, I wrote the labSentinel project for my Nvidia Jetson AI Specialist certification. The basic idea of the project is to be able to supervise old Lab Equipment which does not poses any kind of log output or interface other than a graphical user interface, running on an Windows 3.11 / 95 / NT - maybe even XP system.

I solved this issue by using a video grabber attached to a Jetson Nano and “out-of-band” grabbing the screen output of the experiment computer. I then learned good and bad system states via Nvidias Inference tools and finally got the system to report via MQTT as soon as something did go wrong.