Checking for hardware damage

Robotics & Edge Computing Jetson & Embedded Systems Jetson Nano
1

I tried to add a button to my Jetson Nano. I meant to plug it into pins 39 + 40 (at the bottom) but I misunderstood the pin order and instead I plugged it into pins 1 + 2. When I pressed the button I bridged the +3.3V and +5V and the Nano shut down. Now when I try to use the GPIO library it says:

WARNING: Carrier board is not from a Jetson Developer Kit.
WARNNIG: Jetson.GPIO library has not been verified with this carrier board,
WARNING: and in fact is unlikely to work correctly.

To check if it is a hardware problem, I opened another Jetson Nano that I have never previously used, and I moved the SD card and ethernet and power (micro USB). But the second Nano does not start, it only shows a green light. So I cannot compare.

My best indication that the GPIO pins are fried is that the following code prints the warning and then “0”, but I would expect an input with an internal pull-up to print 1:

import RPi.GPIO as GPIO
pin = 40
GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BOARD)
GPIO.setup(pin, GPIO.IN, pull_up_down=GPIO.PUD_UP)
print(GPIO.input(pin))
GPIO.cleanup()

How can I check that the hardware is truly damaged?

3

hello kylemcdonald,

you may execute the flash process since there’re SPI partitions that should programmed in the fresh new Nano platforms.
for example, please check the flash configuration file for reference,
$OUT/Linux_for_Tegra/bootloader/t210ref/cfg/flash_l4t_t210_spi_sd_p3448.xml

BTW,
the best way for checking hardware issue is probe the signaling by oscilloscope.
thanks

4

Thanks. Rewriting the SD card before starting the fresh Nano allowed it to boot correctly, and now I can swap the same SD card between the two Nanos.

Now I can confirm that the exact same configuration works on one Nano (sort of, there is some issue similar to this post showing latching). But it does not work on the Nano that had +3.3V and +5V bridged. So sad…

5

hello kylemcdonald,

you may go for a RMA (Return Material Authorization) process, if you believe that your Jetson product is defective.
thanks