I’ve been trying to flash the Jetson Orin Nano Developer kit and have walked through all the steps for flashing the microSD card. I used the Etcher program and downloaded the image from the link on Nvidia’s website and it looked successful, but when I power on the Jetson Nano, I don’t see anything on the monitor.
I’ve taken the microSD card out and powered it on again and I see the initial splash screen and then have a terminal shell for commands. Is there a way to put the device into a Recovery Mode? I’ve also tried using the SDKManager from a connected host machine, but it does not recognize the connected device. Any suggestions on what else I can try?
To place the Jetson Orin Nano Developer Kit into Recovery Mode, follow these steps:
Power Off: Ensure the Jetson Orin Nano is completely powered off before beginning.
Prepare Jumper Wire: Use a female-to-female jumper wire to connect pins 9 and 10 on the Jetson’s header. These are required to initiate USB Force Recovery Mode.
Power On with Jumper Wire Connected: While the jumper wire is connected, power on the Jetson Orin Nano. The connection between pins 9 and 10 will put the system into Recovery Mode.
Connect to Host Machine: With the Jetson in Recovery Mode, connect it to a host machine using a USB cable. Open the NVIDIA SDK Manager on the host, which should now recognize the device in recovery mode.
Proceed with SDK Manager: Follow the prompts in SDK Manager to perform any necessary actions, such as flashing or re-installing the system.
This procedure should allow the SDK Manager to detect the device, facilitating any further configurations or updates needed.
Hi sofia.hamrin,
As m-bot suggested, you can follow the steps to put the Orin Nano into recovery mode.
Also refer to this document to verify if the device is in recovery mode.
I will add that recovery mode, in and of itself, does not modify a Jetson. All it does is to put the Jetson in a mode capable of being flashed. If you put a Jetson in recovery mode, and then reboot it, then this is the same as doing nothing at all if there was no flash run between.
I will also add that the developer kit models which run on an SD card have QSPI memory on the module itself. The QSPI is what you need to flash, and not necessarily the SD card when it seems to fail. QSPI of those models (which excludes eMMC modules on third party carrier boards) is essentially environment setup and the boot chain which eventually uses the SD card.
Note that L4T is what actually gets flashed to any Jetson, and this is just what Ubuntu is called after it gets NVIDIA drivers. JetPack/SDK Manager is just a front end to the flash software which installs L4T. Orin can use L4T R35.x or R36.x; this corresponds to JetPack/SDKM 5.x for the former, or JetPack/SDKM 6.x for the latter. The SD card for L4T R35.x will fail if the QSPI uses R36.x. Vice-versa, the SD card for L4T R36.x will fail if the QSPI has R35.x. The two major releases are on cross compatible.
Is this an actual developer’s kit? If so, then the NVIDIA software would work for this. If the module is an eMMC module with a third party carrier board, then quite a bit changes and you would likely need that third party carrier board manufacturer’s flash information and software. The eMMC models tend to use partitions on the eMMC instead of using QSPI, and custom carrier boards tend to require a different device tree to find the hardware.