NVIDIA Jetson Nano Developer kit was introduced in March 2019 for $99. With a quad-core Cortex-A57 processor, a 128-core Maxwell GPU, and 4GB LPPDR4 RAM, it’s a great low-cost AI platform as we wrote in our Jetson Nano getting started guide where we show how to perform inferences on still images and an RTSP video stream.
The company has now gone further in providing an affordable AI computer for developers with the launch of NVIDIA Jetson Nano 2GB Developer Kit with similar features except for the 2GB RAM, and pricing starting at $54 without a wireless adapter or $59 with 802.11b/g/n/ac WiFi 5 USB dongle. Pre-orders are open on sites like Amazon or Seeed Studio and shipping is scheduled to start at the end of the month.
If we look at the photo above, there are very few differences against the $99 version, and indeed most of Jetson Nano 2GB Developer Kit specifications are the same as the original devkit:
- Jetson Nano 2GB CPU Module
- 128-core Maxwell GPU
- Quad-core Arm A57 processor @ 1.43 GHz
- System Memory – 2 GB 64-bit LPDDR4 25.6 GB/s
- Storage – MicroSD card slot
- Video Encode – 4K @ 30 | 4x 1080p @ 30 | 9x 720p @ 30 (H.264/H.265)
- Video Decode – 4K @ 60 | 2x 4K @ 30 | 8x 1080p @ 30 | 18x 720p @ 30 (H.264/H.265)
- Dimensions – 70 x 45 mm
- Baseboard
- 260-pin SO-DIMM connector for Jetson Nano module.
- Video Output – HDMI 2.0
and DP 1.4 - Connectivity
- Gigabit Ethernet (RJ45)
+ 4-pin PoE header - Optional 802.11ac wireless adapter and extension cable
- Gigabit Ethernet (RJ45)
- USB – 1x USB 3.0 ports, 2x USB 2.0 ports, 1x USB 2.0 Micro-B port for power or device mode
- Camera I/F – 1x MIPI CSI-2 DPHY lanes compatible with Raspberry Pi Camera Module V2 and HQ camera
- Expansion
M.2 Key E socket (PCIe x1, USB 2.0, UART, I2S, and I2C) for wireless networking cards- 40-pin expansion header with GPIO, I2C, I2S, SPI, UART signals
- 12-pin header for power and related signals, UART
- Misc – Power LED, 4-pin fan header
- Power Supply – 5V/3A via
power barrelUSB-Cor 5V/2A via micro USB port selectable by jumper
- Dimensions – 100 x 80 x 29 mm (with heatsink)
As we can see from the specifications, the new developer kit does not only lowers RAM capacity to lower the price, as NVIDIA removes DisplayPort output, the M.2 socket, and PoE support. The four USB 3.0 ports have now been replaced by a 1x USB 3.0 port and 2x USB 2.0 ports, and the board now requires a 5V USB-C power supply for power. Compared to NVIDIA Jetson Nano Developer Kit-B01 launched earlier this year with two CSI camera connectors, Jetson Nano 2GB board only comes with one camera connector.
Since the M.2 socket is gone, the only option to add WiFi is by using one of the USB ports, meaning you’d be left with two USB ports to play with. The new board benefit from the software ecosystem created for the earlier boards, and you’ll find NVIDIA JetPack and resources to get started on NVIDIA developer website. The image is slightly different and optimized for low memory usage, as while it’s still based on Ubuntu it features a low memory footprint LXDE desktop environment with Openbox window manager.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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Is this a good board for media center use (decoding 4K video in various formats)?
From my experience with a Jetson TX1 1 year ago, I would say no. No kodi, no vlc, no mpv. I managed to play 4K videos with a CLI program but it was not working flawlessy. Media center was clearly not a target of the Jetpack distro. The board itself was stable enough and quite fast.
IMHO Odroid N2 with Coreelec is a better option for a media center.
There are now Kodi builds for Jetson Nano with hardware acceleration https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=342261&pid=2965053#pid2965053
However I agree an AMLogic box running CoreElec like the N2+ or a decent S905X3 box is a better, cheaper solution for Kodi and includes HDR and interlaced video support.
That was a year ago. Today hardware video acceleration works great in both mpv and VLC, it is a matter of installing prebuilt deb packages: https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/hardware-decoding-in-mpv-player/75872/6
Hardware sound perfect however Nvidia Jetson Nano is not really an option yet for Kodi unless you are a developer looking to add support for NVDEC to Kodi as there is no official software support for it today.
Interesting. However, I don’t see how this can benefit AI applications with only 2Gb of RAM!. What I need is to have the Jetson Xavier NX Developer kit having a reduction in price, currently sits at $399. Make it $199 and I’d purchase one right away.
Hello, does Jetson Nano Kit have a BIOS-Chip ?
Or is it running its 4-core-ARM without BIOS like that was
in beginning of Raspberry Pi ?
I am interested in mainboards or kits without BIOS.
There’s no UEFI/BIOS on most embedded Arm devices.
The processor will have a boot ROM, then the code jumps to a bootloader (often U-Boot) and then the Linux kernel. The boot ROM is within the chip itself, while the bootloader and kernel would typically be stored in external flash storage.
So Jetson Nano does not have a “BIOS”, but there still needs to be some code to handle hardware initialization.
Kodi Tegra fork for Jetson Nano at https://github.com/aliubimov/xbmc/tree/feature/kodi-tegra