How to implement boot-stage indication using an LED on a custom Jetson Orin Nano carrier board?

Robotics & Edge Computing Jetson Systems Jetson Orin Nano
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1

Hello,

We are developing a custom carrier board for the Jetson Orin Nano and would like to use a LED as a boot-status indicator.

Our requirement is for the LED to indicate the current boot stage through different blinking patterns. This would help us identify where the boot process has stopped, particularly during board bring-up and when a display or serial console is not available. Our intended boot indication would therefore be:

Power ON → MB1 → MB2 → UEFI → Kernel → Application Ready

with the LED pattern changing as the boot process progresses.

Questions

  1. Are there any GPIO pins on the Jetson Orin Nano that are recommended or readily available for driving a status LED throughout the boot process?

  2. Can a GPIO be configured and controlled during the MB1 stage, before Linux is available?

  3. Is it possible to control the same GPIO from the different boot stages:

    • MB1
    • MB2
    • UEFI
    • Linux kernel
    • User-space/application

  4. Is there an NVIDIA-recommended mechanism for implementing a boot-status LED using a GPIO?

  5. If the GPIO needs to be configured through the MB1 BCT/pinmux configuration, could you please provide guidance on the appropriate configuration files and procedure?

  6. Is there any existing NVIDIA BSP functionality that can be used to generate or indicate boot-stage status through GPIOs?

    we would greatly appreciate your guidance on this. Thank you

4

hello kiruthiga,

please refer to developer guide, MB1 Configuration Changes, and also Changing the Pinmux.
you should have a specific GPIO pin to control your LED.

5

Hello @JerryChang,

Thank you for the reference. I understand that I need to select a dedicated GPIO pin and configure it through the MB1 pinmux/GPIO configuration. My requirement is to use an LED with different blink patterns to indicate the current boot stage.

Could you please clarify where the LED control logic/script should be added for each boot stage?
Is there an existing NVIDIA BSP mechanism or example for generating GPIO-based boot-stage indications that we can use instead of implementing the functionality from scratch?
If possible, could you please provide an example or point us to the specific files in the Jetson Linux BSP where this functionality should be implemented?

6

unfortunately, we don’t have reference driver to have GPIO-based boot-stage indications. you should have implementation within UEFI/Kernel to toggle the pin differently.