NDAA-compliant NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX and Nano bundles target drones

ARK Electronics has recently introduced NDAA-complaint NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX and Nano bundles designed for drones with the company’s Jetson PAB (Pixhawk Autopilot Bus) carrier board, an ARKV6X flight controller, and an SSD preloaded with NVIDIA Jetpack and the ARK UI.

I’ve come across the board following a post on X pointing to an article on Tom’s Hardware about the US passing a bill called “Countering CCP Drones Act” that would effectively ban DJI drones in the US.  DJI is supposed to have a 90% market share of the U.S. hobby market, a 70% market share of the industrial market, and an over 80% market share of the first responder market, so not everybody will be happy if the bill passes in the senate and becomes enacted by the US president. But US companies making NDAA-compliant hardware and drones may bit mind, and that’s how I discovered ARK Electronics NVIDIA Jetson Orin solutions.

ARK Jetson Orin NX/Nano bundles specifications:

• ARK Jetson Pixhawk Autopilot Bus (PAB) carrier board
  • Ports for Jetson Orin NX/Nano
    • Video Output – Mini DisplayPort
    • Camera – 4x 15-pin Raspberry Pi MIPI CSI Camera FFC connectors
    • Networking – Gigabit Ethernet (RJ45)
    • USB
      • 3x USB 3.0 Type-A ports
      • 1x USB 2.0 Host port
      • Micro USB port for programming
    • Expansion
      • M.2 Key M 2242 (PCIe x4) socket
      • M.2 Key E 2230 (PCIe x2, USB, UART, I2S) socket
    • Sensor/communication interfaces:
      • 4-pin CAN bus JST-GH connector
      • 7-pin dual SPI JST-GH connector
      • 4-pin I2C JST-GH connector
      • 7-pin I2S JST-GH connector
    • Debugging – 6-pin UART JST-SH connector
  • Autopilot connectors
    • PAB Board to Board – 100-pin and 50-pin Hirose DF40 B2B connectors
    • Triple redundant digital power module inputs
      • 5V/6A Max Per Connector
      • I2C Power Monitor Support
      • 3x 6-pin Molex CLIK-Mate
    • 10-pin GPS Plus Safety switch port
    • 2x 4-pin CAN Bus JST-GH connectors
    • 3x 6-pin telemetry ports with Flow Control
    • 10-pin JST-GH connector for 8x PWM outputs
    • 6-pin UART/I2C  JST-GH connector
    • 5-pin RC port
    • 11-pin SPI port
    • Debugging – 10-pin JST-SH connector
  • Power Requirements – 5V/4A minimum
  • Dimensions – 116 x 72 x 23mm (Without NVIDIA Jetson Orin and Flight Controller Module)
• ARKV6X Flight controller
  • MCU – STMicro STM32H743 Cortex-M7 microcontroller @ 480MHz with 2MB Flash, 1MB RAM
  • Storage – MicroSD card slot
  • Sensors
    • Dual Invensense ICM-42688-P IMUs
    • Invensense IIM-42652 Industrial IMU
    • Bosch BMP390 Barometer
    • Bosch BMM150 Magnetometer
  • Firmware support – PX4 Autopilot (default) or ArduPilot
• System-on-Module (one or the other)
  • NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano 4 GB (NDAA compliance unclear: mentioned in the description, but not the title)
  • NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano 4 GB (USA Made and fully NDAA-compliant)
  • NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX 16 GB USA Made (USA Made and fully NDAA-compliant)
• Storage
  • With NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano – 240GB Swissbit SSD
  • With NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX – 480GB Swissbit SSD
• Cooling solution
  • With NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano – Low profile Jetson heatsink.
  • With NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX – Jetson heatsink and fan
• Weight – 107 grams to 172 grams depending on options

You’ll find detailed documentation for the carrier board and flight controllers on gitbook.io. I could not find much information about the “ARK UI” mentioned in the introduction, but you can watch a short demo embedded below.

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Here is a quick demo of the ARK UI running on the Pi6X Flow. Eventually we want this to be the one and only place to configure and fly your drone. We need to shift the drone industry from viewing drones as flying microcontrollers to flying cell phones. This is the first step.… pic.twitter.com/b79q9n4wSu

— Alex Klimaj (@ArkElectron) June 1, 2024

Three bundles are available on ARK Electronics shop:

• ARK Jetson Orin Nano Bundle – $1,585.50
• ARK Jetson Orin Nano NDAA Bundle – $1,625.50
• ARK Jetson Orin NX NDAA Bundle – $2,490.50

The only difference I can see between the first two bundles is that the Jetson Orin Nano in the NDAA bundle is manufactured in the US, and that adds about $40 to the total. ARK Electronics also sells the “ARK Pi6X Flow” baseboard for the Raspberry Pi CM4 and various sensor modules suitable for drones.

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