First Time Jetson Nano Setup

The first time you use the Jetson Nano, you may find it easier to get it setup using a monitor and keyboard. Hook up your monitor to the HDMI port, and keyboard/mouse to the USB ports.

Getting the Firmware

There are extensive guides available on the Nvidia website which detail how to prepare your Jetson Nano. The basic steps are:

1.      Download and extract the latest firmware image. In this tutorial, we used JP 4.4.

2.      Format your SD card and burn the firmware image to the SD card using a program such as Balena Etcher.

3.      Inset the SD card into the Jetson Nano, and power up.

The first time you boot up the Jetson Nano, you will be asked to setup a username and password, and these will be required for SSH or Serial access later.

By default, the Jetson Nano is setup as a DHCP client. Therefore, you can connect it to your office router so that it can get an IP address and access the internet. Once you have connected to the internet, run

$ sudo apt update

$ sudo apt upgrade

This will make sure that your package lists and packages are up to date. After that make sure that your Jetson clock is synchronized. This is necessary to access secure websites.

$ timedatectl

                      Local time: Tue 2020-05-05 16:23:05 +08

                  Universal time: Tue 2020-05-05 08:23:05 UTC

                        RTC time: Tue 2020-05-05 08:23:06

                       Time zone: Asia/Singapore (+08, +0800)

       System clock synchronized: yes

systemd-timesyncd.service active: yes

                 RTC in local TZ: no

After the initial setup is complete, connect the Jetson Nano to the Smart Radio as shown in the hardware diagram.