opendatacam

Jetson Nano

Jetson Nano
Limitations
Shopping list
Setup Opendatacam
1. Flash Jetson Nano:
2. Set correct Powermode according to your Power supply
Using microUSB
Using barrel jack (5V - 4A)
3. Setup a swap partition:
4. Verify your if your USB Camera is connected
5. Install Opendatacam
6. Test Opendatacam
7. Access Opendatacam via Wifi hotspot
8. Tips
9. Housing
Advanced usage
Use Raspberry Pi Cam with a non-docker installation of Opendatacam
(EXPERIMENTAL) Use Raspberry Pi Cam with Opendatacam default
installation
Setup
Why

Limitations
Jetson Nano has two power mode, 5W and 10W.

Once Opendatacam is installed and running without a monitor, it runs perfectly fine on 5W
powermode (which is nice because you can power it with a powerbank). If you use it with a
monitor connected, the display will be a bit laggy but it should work.

We recommend you to do the setup with a monitor connected and then make your Jetson
nano available as a Wifi hotspot to operate it from another device.
The 10W Power mode of the Jetson won’t bring much performance improvement for
Opendatacam.

Shopping list
The minimum setup for 5W power mode is:

1 Jetson nano
1 Camera USB compatible camera or Raspberrycam module v2
1 Wifi dongle, this one is compatible out of the box, or see compatibility list.
1 MicroSD card (at least 32 GB and 100 MB/s)
1 Power supply: either a 5V⎓2A Micro-USB adapter or a Powerbank with min 2A
output.

For 10W power mode (this is good for desktop use when you plug the screen, the mouse,
the keyboard, it draws powers from the peripherics)

Power supply: 5V⎓4A DC barrel jack adapter, 5.5mm OD x 2.1mm ID x 9.5mm length,
center-positive
1x 2.54mm Standard Computer Jumper This is used on the J48 Pin when supplying
power from the jack entry instead of the microUSB. It tells the Jetson to by-pass the
microUSD power entry.

For setup:

1 usb mouse
1 usb keyboard
1 screen (HDMI or Displayport)
And for faster connexion, a ethernet cable to your router

Learn more about Jetson Nano ecosystem:

https://elinux.org/Jetson_Nano#Ecosystem_Products_and_Sensors

Setup Opendatacam

1. Flash Jetson Nano:

Follow Flashing guide (don’t forget to verify if CUDA is in your PATH)

2. Set correct Powermode according to your Power supply

Using microUSB
Using microUSD with a powerbank or a 5V⎓2A power supply, you just need to plug-in and
the Jetson Nano will start when connected to it.

When started, we advise you to set the powermode of the Jetson Nano to 5W so it won’t
crash, to do so, open a terminal and run:

sudo nvpmodel -m 1

To switch back to 10W power mode (default)

sudo nvpmodel -m 0

Using barrel jack (5V - 4A)

When working with the Jetson Nano with the monitor connected, we advise to use the
barrel jack power. In order to do so you need first to put a jumper on the J48 pin (more
details on Jetson Nano power supply)

By default, the Jetson Nano will already run on the 10W power mode, but you can make sure
it is by running:

sudo nvpmodel -m 0
3. Setup a swap partition:

In order to reduce memory pressure (and crashes), it is a good idea to setup a 6GB swap
partition. (Nano has only 4GB of RAM)

git clone https://github.com/JetsonHacksNano/installSwapfile

cd installSwapfile
chmod 777 installSwapfile.sh
./installSwapfile.sh

Reboot the Jetson nano

4. Verify your if your USB Camera is connected

ls /dev/video*
# Output should be: /dev/video0

If this isn’t the case, run the install script anyway, and after you will need to modify the
config.json file to select your desired VIDEO_INPUT

If you have a Raspberry Pi Cam, see advanced usage.

5. Install Opendatacam

# Download install script

wget -N https://raw.githubusercontent.com/opendatacam/opendatacam/v3.0.0-beta.2/

# Give exec permission

chmod 777 install-opendatacam.sh

# NB: You will be asked for sudo password when installing the docker container

# Install command for Jetson Nano

./install-opendatacam.sh --platform nano

6. Test Opendatacam

Open http://localhost:8080 .

This will be super slow if you are using this directly on the monitor connected to the Jetson
nano, see next step to access Opendatacam from an external device.
7. Access Opendatacam via Wifi hotspot

N.B: you need a wifi dongle for this.

Make jetson available as a WiFi hotspot

Reboot
Click on the network icon on the top right > Connection Information

Take note somewhere of the Jetson IP Address, in this case 10.42.0.1

Unplug monitor / ethernet / keyboard / mouse and reboot

Connect with another device to this Wifi network, and open :8080 in your browser

After rebooting the Jetson Nano may takes 1-5 min to start the docker container, so if your
browser say “Page not found”, just retry after a few minutes

You should be able to operate Opendatacam without lag issues.

8. Tips
 You’ll notice there are no button to power on / off button your Jetson Nano. When you
plug the power supply it will power on immediately. If you want to restart you can just
un-plug / re-plug if you are not connected via a Monitor or SSH. There is a way to add
power buttons via the J40 pins, see nvidia forum.

You can connect your Jetson to ethernet and SSH into it to do all the setup without
having to connect a monitor (after having setup a fixed IP)

9. Build a case

Here are the steps to set up the Jetson NANO in the Wildlife Cam Casing from Naturebytes.

Use with raspberry pi cam v2 or any CSI cam

IMPORTANT: Unplug any usb webcam before plugging the raspberry pi cam or reboot after
unpluging / plugin things.

If you use a raspberry pi cam, just change the "VIDEO_INPUT" to "raspberrycam" in

config.json

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