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The Jetson Nano WINS! Read all about it!

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Robo Pi
(@robo-pi)
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Ok this is kind of a silly post, but Chris at Explaining Computers has just placed the Jetson Nano at the top of his favorite SBC list.   Even, by his own admission, it's actually a development board and not really an SBC.

He also acknowledges that the Jetson Nano is aimed at A.I. development which may not be the area of interest for many other people.  He then goes on to argue that it can actually make a good SBC even though this wasn't it's original design or purpose.

In any case, I've been holding off ordering my Jetson Nano due to various concerns surrounding the OS used by NIVIDIA.   And because I wasn't absolutely certain that this is the best SBC system for my purposes.  Of course my purpose for this system is indeed A.I. research so I guess that settles it. ? 

Now that Chris has given it his thumbs up as the best SBC for the dough and has no serious complaints with it, I'm ready to press CHECKOUT!  And kiss $200 goodbye! ? 

And yes, I know that Jetson Nano is only $99, but by the time you get a power supply, WiFi, Case, Cooling fan, SD Card, and a Camera guess what?  You're up to $200.   And I still won't have the TF mini to go with it which is also on my "Desperately Want" list.   I'll end up getting a  TF mini for it later.

In the meantime I'm going to go press the CheckOut button on Amazon and watch $200 get sucked out of my bank account.

True confessions of a robotics technology addict.   I just had to have it.  Honest!  ?

Without it I would have shriveled up and died.  I'm sure of it. ?

DroneBot Workshop Robotics Engineer
James


   
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Robo Pi
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I just did it!  I placed the order.  $236.65 <--- I included the TF mini LED LIDAR.  Me bad. ? 

What I didn't include was any kind of monitor.   All I have are notebook computers here.  I do have some older CRT tube type computer monitors laying around.  I hope I can use one of those?   Otherwise I've have no way to see it boot up.

Anyway, here's what I just ordered: I'll figure out how to make it work later. ? 

I might need to break down and buy some kind of monitor for it eventually.

Nano Order

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James


   
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Robo Pi
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The order actually came to a grand total of $250.86 with TAX!

I'm financially distraught now. ? 

This is a major purchase for me.  I only paid $300 for my car!

Caravan (3)

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James


   
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Robo Pi
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Don't believe anyone who tells you that a Jetson Nano only costs $99.   That's just a gimmick to get you in the door.

? ? ? ? 

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James


   
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Spyder
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Robo Pi
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@spyder

Now all I need to do is find an old broken laptop to salvage the screen from. ? 

Actually I have couple here, but I'm not sure what kind of screens they have?  They might be rather antiquated.

DroneBot Workshop Robotics Engineer
James


   
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Robo Pi
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The Nano package came today.   Everything in one shipment.  I'm really glad I got the camera and TF mini so I'll have some decent sensors to play with.   I'm also glad I got the acrylic case for it with the fan.   Not sure when I'll start assembling this.  I also haven't downloaded the OS image yet.  But there's no rush.  I just wanted to grab this development package to experiment with over the winter.   So now I have it.   It feels good. ? 

The original idea was to just use this on a bench for A.I. experiments for now.  Later to be used in Alysha.   But who knows?  I might end up making a rover body for it at point in the interim just to see how well it does at navigation.

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James


   
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JoeLyddon
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@robo-pi

Very good, James!

That's a little too much for me...  can't justify the cost...

Hope you will keep us updated as to your progress...

BTW, here is another source of Jetson Nano learning...  Paul McWhorter started a new series of tutorials on this not too long ago...

 A better link...

  

BTW, looks like BILL is back!   Glad he's OK!

Later,

 

 

This post was modified 4 years ago by JoeLyddon

Have Fun,
Joe Lyddon

www.woodworkstuff.net


   
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Robo Pi
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Posted by: @joelyddon

That's a little too much for me...  can't justify the cost...

It's actually too much for me too! ? 

I justified the cost because I've decided to take A.I. seriously and make it a priority focus this winter.  The Jetson Nano does appear to be the chosen platform for studying A.I. techniques.   At least within this cost window.   There are other platforms out there, but they are far beyond what I could dare to squeak  out.

This Nano originally got my attention because being reviewed by everyone as a $99 platform.   I actually stumbled into $100 recently that I wasn't expecting.   So I decided to use that cash to buy the Nano.

As you can see this quickly blossomed into a $250 adventure.   Of course part of that was for the camera and TF mini LED "LIDAR".    Two very nice accessories that I'm sure will prove to be quite useful    with the Jetson and A.I. 

But that's ok.  So I went  $150 over budget.  What else is new. ? 

Hopefully it will all pan out and I'll  enjoy the learning experience.

Posted by: @joelyddon

BTW, here is another source of Jetson Nano learning...  Paul McWhorter started a new series of tutorials on this not too long ago...

Yes I've been watching those already.   He just started the series and he hasn't produced any videos on A.I.  yet. He is promising to cover OpenCV which I am also interesting in learning just to see what it's all about.  So I'm looking forward to watching his entire series on this.

Posted by: @joelyddon

BTW, looks like BILL is back!   Glad he's OK!

Yes I noticed his post.  It's good to see that he's still suffering from work overload. ? 

Just kidding.  But yeah, it's good to see that he's active.     I was starting to wonder what happened to him.   Normally he isn't quite this invisible. 

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James


   
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Duce robot
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@robo-pi

I want to get a nvidia but if I get the up grade from the Jetson nano will it still be in line with the program here even though I don't know really how to use it I'm big on infrastructure if its there it can be used when ready I'm debating on it an up grade is quite expensive I'm just wondering how its going to tie in  he's making his own board so who knows but the shadow arduino to control boards to the nano to the RPI and beyond this is going to be the really hard part for me I'm wondering if I can cut some of it out because I have stack shields on top of a mega 2560 for the motors.


   
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Robo Pi
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@duce-robot

I wouldn't buy a Jetson Nano unless you have a specific purpose for it ahead of time.   I bought mine because I'm interested in studying A.I. techniques and this is what the Jetson Nano is designed for.   Plus there appears to be an increasing interest in this development board among those  who are into A.I. so I expect to see more videos by makers along those lines.   The one pointed to by @joelyddon by Paul McWhorter is one series that is just getting underway.  I expect other YouTubers will follow suit.

Also, Bill had said that he will be doing future videos on the Jetson Nano as well.   And, if I'm not mistaken, he also suggested that he would be incorporating a Jetson Nano into his DB1 project.   But he also left things open to change so it's hard to say for sure what the future might hold.

In any case, I wouldn't order a Jetson Nano until you know exactly why you're buying it and what you plan on using it for.

I have a lot of A.I. experiments that I am planning to run on the Jetson Nano.   One of them is to use the  generic face recognition feature available in OpenCV.    This feature will already recognized the presence of a face. That's all it does by the way.  It doesn't recognize individuals by their individual faces.  But it does return a box that surrounds the face along with the coordinates of that box.   I'll be then taking just that part of the original image and working with this smaller image to try to create an ANN that can then recognize a specific person base on the features of the face in that image.

So this is one of my goals with the Jetson Nano.  Other SBCs could be used for this too, but none of those have the processing power of a 128 core GPU.  <---- That's the key feature that sets the Jetson Nano apart from other SBC development systems.

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James


   
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Duce robot
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@robo-pi

Ahhhh I see OK  I will be interested on how it interfaces with it all I don't have the money on hand now but it is a future consideration I'm not interested in the object recognition as much yet but I am very interested in the voice and vocabulary that infrastructure is in the robot now I'll post it talking for entertainment purposes only but I was wondering if the nano is even used for that ?  But I will soon have it up just saying little phrases from si fi movies  for now like I'm sorry but Im afraid I can't let you do that  or ludicrous speed! But I would eventually like to have it be able to talk on its own of course with a lot of help from the forum  .??? because I just don't know how I'm just sitting on the group w bench along with all the other misfits waiting for direction.lol???


   
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Robo Pi
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Posted by: @duce-robot

I am very interested in the voice and vocabulary that infrastructure is in the robot now I'll post it talking for entertainment purposes only but I was wondering if the nano is even used for that ?

You can do quite a bit in terms of voice recognition and voice speaking using just a standard Rasberry Pi.   In fact, you can make a robot appear to be quite intelligent using extremely simple methods.

A Jetson Nano can of course also be used for this.   But you wouldn't need to use the power of the Jetson Nano unless you had a very large database of words and their related meanings that you wanted to be able to analyze quickly.

There are a lot of techniques that can be used for creating speech platforms.     I'm currently working on one  using C# and Microsoft Speech  Platform.   I'm only using this platform  as a learning tool to see how speech platforms are  built.   I actually have ideas  for improving on the Microsoft Speech Platform which I've already implemented  in my own C# code.   For example, after looking at  how Microsoft deals with semantic recognition I chose to abandon that part of their platform because I didn't like their approach and wrote my own semantic recognition software in C#.   I still use the Microsoft Speech Recognition Engine though, as well as their  Text to Speech Engine.   No point in reinventing thought since they already work well.

I do plan on moving over to a Python-based Speech Engine in the future however.   And once I do that I will be able to use things like Raspberry Pi and the Jetson Nano.   So I'm looking forward to making the transition over to the Python Speech Engine so I can use multiple computer platforms.

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James


   
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Duce robot
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@robo-pi

I'm just starting to try I keep wanting to call it Monty python  but python its very interesting it looks a little more code friendly than c. .but I'm not a code head so I'm sure its going to be challenging.


   
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Robo Pi
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First thing to understand is that TTS (Text to Speech) and SR (Speech Recognition) are two entirely different and separate things.   Although, they are often both used if you want you robot to both recognize voice commands and reply to them using spoken words.

The first thing to do is to get your robot to speak.   So that would be TTS.

Here's very crude example of a Python program that creates audio files from text that your robot can then use to speak.  It uses a Google  TTS library to do this.

I'm not personally thrilled with having to create mp3 files for everything I want my robot to say.   So I'm not recommending this method other than perhaps as a first try at learning one way to create a TTS conversion.

With the method described above  you can have your robot say anything you like.   As I say, this particular method is a bit cumbersome using mp3 files.   But it's a start.

Speech Recognition is an entirely different program.  There are a lot of videos on YouTube for doing that as well. 

I haven't looked into  exactly what Python methods I'll be using, but I definitely don't want to need to create mp3 files every time my robot wants to say something.   So I doubt that I'll be using the methods  in the above video..

But if you are looking to have the robot say specific things from Sci-Fi movies, etc, then you might do well to create mp3 files  for doing that.  You could even take those mp3 files into something like Audacity and add additional sound effects, etc.   So using mp3  files may be advantageous for some applications.

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James


   
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