We are looking to be able to swap out the Raspberry Pi 3B+ for a NVIDIA Jetson in our hardware.
The FarmBot uses a custom Linux kernel built via buildroot.
And buldroot is basically a tool that a developer runs on a desktop, puts a bunch of information about the “target” into it and then hits “build”. Then buildroot spits out a bunch of files ready to go onto an SDCard. The resulting files are really really small and have exactly what we need (and nothing else). This is in contrast to Debian / Raspbian where they expect the user to install new packages at runtime.
What are the main barriers/snags to using the NVIDIA computer for FarmBot operations?
The big issues right now are:
- Using software components that are not compatible with buildroot-based systems / requiring us to use a special version of the Linux kernel
- Using sotware components that are not compatible with an open source project (eg: requiring the use of non-free OSes for development, or per-device licensing fees that would stop self-hosters from building their own versions)
There might be more snags because we havn’t dedicated enough time and resources to the issue.
Does anybody have any suggestions on how we can make this swap out seamless?
Marc