While we were trying to uncompress and run Jetpack 3.3 and flash the Jetson we ran into a slight problem. The OTG port(micro USB) fell off of the Jetson board, and we would like to know if there is anyway to operate and/or flash the Jetson without using the OTG port. Thank you for helping.
Regards,
Sim-City Robotics
Even on older releases it would have been risky and with lots of ways to fail doing this without the OTG port. In more recent releases this only gets more difficult. In all cases, if the operating system itself is not up and running, then there is no chance at all. Does it currently run? If so, what release?
If the system does not currently run, then you’ll have to RMA if possible.
The Jetson does run, however the monitor does not receive a signal. We successfully installed JetPack 3.3, but before we could restart the Jetson the OTG port fell off.
Does this show all “ok” (I’m wondering if libGLX.so is correct…if not, then GUI would fail)?
sha1sum -c /etc/nv_tegra_release
As far as flashing goes, this would be L4T R28.2.1 from JetPack3.3 (see “head -n 1 /etc/nv_tegra_release”). There are a number of steps related to signing content prior to adding it to a partition, and so you’d need other Jetson to test on first to see if the signing was correct. Any kind of flash would require you to have 100% of all partitions correct the first time, and there would be no second chance.
If you find someone good with surface mount rework you might be able to get the connector added back on; if RMA is still possible, then I’d go that route. How badly do you need this particular module?
When the connector fell off, one of the leads on the connector was broken and is unable to be soldered back to the board. We did also call Nvidia and they said they were able to do nothing to fix the Jetson and RMA was not possible.
Does it currently boot? Often an interrupted flash will leave it non-bootable. Also, are you trying to save something on the unit, or is it just the unit itself you are worried about?
It does not boot, the monitor does not receive a signal from the Jetson. We are trying to save the unit and make it usable for our robot this year.
I hate to say it, but since it doesn’t boot I don’t believe there is a way to make it work without some sort of repair to the connector. If the circuit board itself is ok, then someone skilled with hot air rework tools could probably put a new connector on (you might find a friendly local small assembly shop willing to try).
The JTAG connector in theory could be used, but you’d need to be someone inside of NVIDIA to use it, and the JTAG hardware itself is far more expensive than the board. JTAG is less likely to work than is a skilled hot air rework bench tech (you could buy a lot of Xaviers for the price of the JTAG hardware…and then you wouldn’t be able to use it without sending to NVIDIA).
I don’t have any particularly simple ways to get around this. There was a recent addition to the TX2 line (normally 8GB of RAM), and the module of this sells for the same price as a TX1 module…unfortunately, this doesn’t come with a carrier board, so in reality, unless you already have a carrier board for a TX2 the bare module wouldn’t help much. On the other hand, there is an educational discount for a TX2 dev kit. The carrier footprint is larger and there would be significant work transitioning from 32-bit to 64-bit, but performance would go up substantially. Don’t know what your options are, but it is something to consider.