DRIVE AGX Xavier vehicle installation and wiring

Autonomous Vehicles DRIVE AGX Xavier DRIVE AGX Xavier General
1

Please provide the following info (check/uncheck the boxes after creating this topic):
Software Version
DRIVE OS Linux 5.2.6
DRIVE OS Linux 5.2.6 and DriveWorks 4.0
DRIVE OS Linux 5.2.0
DRIVE OS Linux 5.2.0 and DriveWorks 3.5
NVIDIA DRIVE™ Software 10.0 (Linux)
NVIDIA DRIVE™ Software 9.0 (Linux)
other DRIVE OS version
other

Target Operating System
Linux
QNX
other

Hardware Platform
NVIDIA DRIVE™ AGX Xavier DevKit (E3550)
NVIDIA DRIVE™ AGX Pegasus DevKit (E3550)
other

SDK Manager Version
1.7.1.8928
other

Host Machine Version
native Ubuntu 18.04
other

Hi everyone,
We are about to install NVIDIA AGX Xavier to our vehicle and we are evaluating the proper way to do so.

Can you advise us with respect to the recommended installation and for additional measures we can consider, like power regulators or switches we can use to protect the system?

Our calculated total power consumption for the AGX system is at 12V*38A = 456W.

Having reviewed the “NVIDIA DRIVE AGX SYSTEM MECHANICAL INSTALLATION GUIDE” and your reference implementation of “NVIDIA Drive Hyperion 7.1 Developer Kit Hardware Installation” we have a few questions.

Section “5.3 Installation” of the first document only mentions a fuse for protection. Is this sufficient for vehicle usage of DRIVE AGX or do we need to do something additional? Does the NVIDIA Drive AGX have any other protection mechanism (excluding the AGX power supply) that we can rely on?

From the second document of your own installation on the Hyperion platform, I have also not seen any info, with respect to protection, fuses or voltage regulators. I see a “Battery Isolator/Isolator Relay control Signal”, which I suppose is your selected protection mechanism. Can you offer a bit more insight as to what that is? Is there an option to buy this or some similar solution for our system from you?

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I also read on the Hyperion platform that you used an AC-DC inverter, for “offline” usage without draining the battery (ex when the car is not powered). This setup only transforms the wall power 220 AC to 12V DC and supplies CMC-1 SB50 terminal without any connection to the car battery, right?

Generally, we are considering the following set-ups, please advise us to what makes more sense to do. Specific or recommended products from the market that we can use would also be very helpful.

  1. 12V car battery → fuse → CMC-1 SB50 terminal
  2. Same with 1) but with some voltage monitoring relay to monitor voltage and disconnect at out-of-range voltage (ex <9V or >15V). How fast should these systems react?
  3. 12V car battery → fuse → DC-AC inverter (12V – 220V) → AGX power supply/ AGX power adaptor → CMC-1 SB50 terminal → DRIVE AGX. Here I guess we would utilize any protection mechanism found on the AGX power supply itself, I have also read a few people trying this from forum posts in here. I read on the Hyperion document that you use TS-400 DC-AC Inverter, would this one be a good candidate for that? It is at 400W less than our max 540W but maybe it would be sufficient since you use it on the Pegasus of the Hyperion system and in general, we should rarely face the max output of the DRIVE AGX platform.
4

Hi,
“battery isolator” for option #2 like:
https://www.bluesea.com/products/7615/ATD_Automatic_Timer_Disconnect

5

Hello Jim and thanks for your quick reply. Thanks for providing a product as well, this simplifies things a lot for us.

A few questions about this specific one.

  1. Would you propose cut-off to 11, 11.5 or 12V ? I guess 11.5 would be good since this is what you propose on the hyperion documentation (Table 1).
  2. The nominal ampere is at 120A which is quite a lot more than the 38 of the AGX. No problem either way, since we will use this only for voltage protection and not current (we will have the fuse for that at ~40A), but just wondering if you considered 120A needed for possible surge currents from the AGX.
  3. Would you propose installation of this timer close to the NVIDIA or close to the battery? Our vehicle has a battery located to the front of the car and NVIDIA will be installed at the back.
  4. We are planning to NOT connect the IGN signal to the timer, since our vehicle is electric and it looks a bit complicated for us to do so. In that case, from what I have checked, this timer will connect the load at 13V and the timer disconnect time (5 sec, 15 min, 30 min, etc) will start counting at 12.75V. I am wondering if the 13V will then become the “nominal voltage” case for us, can you confirm if my understanding is correct or if not connecting the IGN will create any problems?
  5. Since we will not use the IGN, we will definitely include a switch, like the one you use as well. Could you maybe propose some product for that as well, something similar to what you use?
    image
6

Hi, any updates on my questions above? Please let me know if you would like any other input from my side.

I also came across a couple more notes that I would like to clarify.

  1. the following note on your guideline, states that 2AWG wires should be used if the vehicle battery is at the front.

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This should be valid only for the Pegasus system, right? For our Xavier platform, the connector, Anderson SB50, only goes up to 6 AWG, which I guess is the highest possible wire we can use.

  1. From the same document, I see that you used a Blue Sea Systems 185-Series Circuit Breaker but it seems that you used the 60 Amps model, although your system is specified at 70 Amps
    image
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    image865×272 51.5 KB

Can you explain why or how you selected the fuse like so? The mentioned maximum 70 Amps of the Hyperion documentation also seems a bit contradicting with the NVIDIA Mechanical installation guide that considers 95 A for the Pegasus model.

  1. Since the documentation guidelines are that the following table 5-2 should be the only indicator for selecting the NVIDIA AGX device fuse, how did you come up with 95 A → max 70 A → fuse at 60 A ?

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Please let me know how I should approach the above topics, considering that the system we use is NVIDIA Xavier AGX. I am, now, in a bit of a doubt considering the fuse as well, since I see a bit of divergence to what you follow on Pegasus.

7

Hi everyone,

Next week we are planning to implement the vehicle cabling. Will you provide any answer on our topics?

8

DRIVE AGX and DRIVE PEGASUS have different configurations depend on number of Xavier SOC, dGPU and peripherals, fuse can be selected base on the whole system budget.
Follow the matching product guide should be good.