Jetson Nano powers on but no display with monitor and headless does not work

Autonomous Machines Jetson & Embedded Systems Jetson Nano
1

Hi,
I’m new to using Jetson Nano. I followed all the instructions and setup my SD card. I flashed it using balenaEtcher-1.19.21 and I have taken the jetson-nano-jp461-sd-card-image.
I placed my SD card and connected - keyboard, mouse and HDMI and placed the jumper (J48). I get the green light on the board, but nothing on the screen. No logo of NVIDIA either

I tried with headless as well no luck. I’m struggling with this since two days. Please advise. Your help will be greatly appreciated.

2

Hello @raghu.in10straining,

Just a few questions so we can start debugging the issue:

  1. If you connect a usb cable from the Jetson, are you able to ping 192.168.55.1 from the computer?
  2. Can you connect to the board via UART?

regards,
Andrew
Embedded Software Engineer at ProventusNova

3

Hi Andrew,

Thank you for your response. Here are the responses to the questions:

  1. When I try to ping 192.168.55.1 I get request timed out. I have DC power (with jumper J48) and USB connected to the computer. I tried to change the USB cables and check, no luck. Also, the device is not detected in my device manager under Ports (COM & LPT) I see only Intel. Not sure if this helps.
  2. I’m not familiar with UART, tried to look-up online but did not get options that I could understand.

Regards
Raghu

4

Hello @raghu.in10straining,

Thanks for getting back with the test results.

In order to connect with UART you need a USB to TTL adapter.
They are very cheap and you can find them everywhere.

For instance, you could get them from Amazon, like this one. That is just the first example that I found, but you can look for the one that you like the most.

Then, you connect the USB to your laptop and using the jumper cables, you connect it so that RX on the adapter is connected to TX on the Jetson board, TX on the adapter connects to RX on the Jetson board and ground on the adapter connects to sound on the Jetson board.

Once connected, you can access UART console with minicom or screen.

Also, another test you could try is flashing the board with SDK Manager.
Can you give that a try?

regards,
Andrew
Embedded Software Engineer at ProventusNova

5

Hello Andrew,

Thank you for the detailed guidance on UART. I will order the cable and try.

Before that, I will test it by flashing the board with SDK Manager and get back to you with the results / findings.

Regards
Raghu

6

Hi Andrew,

Here’s an observation, I changed another cable now, connected my Jetson Nano to my laptop, the device is detected now. It’s showing in the other devices as APX device. Here’s the screen shot for your reference. May be this can give some lead.
image

I tried to look for updating the APX drivers, couldn’t find any. Ideally this should be recognized in the Port(COM & LTP) which is not the case for me.

Regards
Raghu

7

Hello @raghu.in10straining,

I found this post.

You might find it useful.

Someone is having a similar issue and they seem to be associating APX mode on Windows with recovery mode. However, it is uncertain that it is the case.

Do you have access to a linux machine?

regards,
Andrew
Embedded Software Engineer at ProventusNova

8

Hi Andrew,

I don’t have a Linux machine, can I try WSL?

Regards
Raghu

9

@raghu.in10straining,

I have never used WSL.
However, it is usually not recommended to use anything but a Linux machine to ensure the optimal environment for flashing a Jetson board.

regards,
Andrew
Embedded Software Engineer at ProventusNova

10

Hi Andrew,

I will check if I can get a Linux machine. Any other options? Not sure what APX device in the other devices means. I tried to look into the forums link that you shared, no luck.

Regards
Raghu

11

@raghu.in10straining,

The other option would be to connect to the UART output of the board.
In there you will be able to see the boot logs, usually something shows up in there that could point to the root cause of the issue.

regards,
Andrew
Embedded Software Engineer at ProventusNova

12

Hi Andrew,

Thank you, will try that and get back with observations.

Regards
Raghu

1 Like
13

A quick question, if I remove the micro SD card and connect the HDMI to the display, will the jetson nano display anything on the screen? or do we need the micro SD card after it’s flashed?

14

@raghu.in10straining,

You will need the SD card for the board to work.

Is there a reason why you would need to have an option without SD card?

regards,
Andrew
Embedded Software Engineer at ProventusNova

15

Hello Andrew,

I was thinking, if SD card / flashing is the issue, then we can isolate the problem. Also, without the SD card I was hoping if we can see the nvidia logo atleast

Regards
Raghu

16

Hello @raghu.in10straining,

That is a good question.

However, you would need to have a NVIDIA Jetson with either eMMC or NVMe support.
So that you can flash directly on one those memories instead.

Were you able to connect via UART?

regards,
Andrew
Embedded Software Engineer at ProventusNova

17

Hello Andrew, I could not get the UART USB yet. I will get back to you with the observations once I get it. Thank you for your support on this.

1 Like
18

Hello,

It looks like I have the same issue here, any news after flashing the card with a Linux machine?

Regards

19

Hello,

No luck, I could not get a linux machine. I have to get a machine and try. Any options on Windows would help. Please.

Regards
Raghu