Jetson Nano 2GB dev kit to launch for $59
Oct 5, 2020 — by Eric Brown 1,569 views
Nvidia unveiled a $59 “Nano 2GB Developer Kit” for makers and students with a Jetson Nano limited to 2GB RAM. The kit lacks the M.2, PoE, and DP of the $99 kit and has fewer USB ports.
In March of last year, Nvidia reached out to the maker community by launching a hacker-friendly, $99 dev kit for its new Linux-driven, AI-focused Jetson Nano module. Now it has introduced a $59 Jetson Nano 2GB Developer Kit designed for students, educators, and hobbyists.” The kit is supported with free online training and AI-certification programs.
The Nano 2GB Developer Kit uses a new configuration of the Jetson Nano with 2GB LPDDR4 RAM — half that found on the standard Nano used on the original kit. The Nano modules used on both kits lack the 16GB of eMMC found on the commercial version and instead supply a microSD slot.
Nano 2GB Developer Kit
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Nvidia’s 70 x 45mm Jetson Nano module has a CPU complex of 4x 1.43GHz Arm Cortex-A57 cores that falls in between the Jetson TX1 and TX2. Its 128-core Maxwell GPU is less powerful than the TX1, but it still offers CUDA-X AI and [email protected] support. Nvidia provides its standard, Linux for Tegra based JetPack SDK, which includes a container runtime and supports cloud-native development.
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Instead of the 4x USB 3.0 host ports offered by the $99 kit, you get a single USB 3.0 along with 2x USB 2.0 ports. The power jack has been replaced with a USB Type-C port for 5V DC input. Nvidia has removed the earlier DisplayPort, M.2 E-key slot, and PoE capability.
Jetson Nano 2GB Developer Kit (left) and earlier Jetson Nano Dev Kit
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Like the $99 dev kit, the Nano 2GB Developer Kit has a 100 x 80 x 29mm form factor including the built-in heatsink. Like the original, there are HDMI and Gigabit Ethernet ports, a micro-USB device port, and a Raspberry Pi style 40-pin GPIO connector with I/O including GPIO, I2C, I2S, SPI, PWM, and UART.
Once again, a MIPI-CSI connector is available that supports the Raspberry Pi Camera Module V2 and 12-megapixel Raspberry Pi High Quality Camera. The board also provides 12-pin and fan headers.
Detail views for Jetson Nano 2GB Developer Kit (left) and earlier Jetson Nano Dev Kit
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The price does not include the required 5V/3A adapter and 32GB microSD card. A USB WiFi adapter, which is optional on the standard kit, is included free in most regions. In areas where the dongle is not immediately available, Nvidia will reduce the price of the kit.
Jetson Nano 2GB Developer Kit
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The kit ships with tutorials and supports Nvidia open source robotics projects including its JetBot. Nvidia hosts a variety of downloadable AI containers for JetPack. Although backed by a Jetson developer community site where developers can share their open source Jetson projects, the board is not open source on the hardware side like Google’s AI-enabled Coral Dev Boards.
Stated Christine Nguyen, STEM curriculum director at Boys & Girls Club of Western Pennsylvania: “We’re excited to utilize the NVIDIA Jetson AI Specialist certification materials with our students as they work toward becoming leaders in the fields of AI and robotics.”
Further information
The Jetson Nano 2GB Developer Kit will be available for $59 at the end of the month. More information may be found in Nvidia’s announcement and product page.
While better than most ARM based PCs, it still is just a Chinese TV box, with a 6+ years old GPU pasted to it.
FYI, there is a Kodi media center fork for Jetson Nano / Tegra being developed on GitHub here:
https://github.com/aliubimov/xbmc/tree/feature/kodi-tegra
Hardware sound perfect for a Kodi media center, 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.