Simple flashing guide

The recommended guide

The simple flashing guide describes how to flash your Auvidea carrier board system, so it can boot and run. With this guide, everything you will need is included in the download package you can get from Auvidea. This flashing guide is recommended for the Auvidea carrier board series. If you are using an Orin nano or Orin NX module pleas see the Orin nano & Orin NX flashing guide.

Before you start

• If you are using an AGX Orin, you have to use the Advanced flashing guide

• Please make sure to use a Linux host PC with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS or Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (other versions may work, but some caused problems in the past!) operating system. Please use a native setup (no virtual machine). This Host PC should have a high bandwidth internet connection for the download of 3 GB+ installation file in the following steps

• You should make sure that Python 2.x is installed, as it is required for the NVIDIA SDK Manager. You can check your installation in the command line with: python --version example return: Python 2.7.17. If you do not get a return or error, you do not have Python 2.x installed. (Please use: sudo apt install python to install Python 2.x to your system)

• You will also need a high-quality standard USB 2.0 Type A to micro-USB 2.0 cable

Download installation file from Auvidea

• Download the installation file for your setup from Auvidea. JNxxx means the carrier board series starting with JN, for example JN30D. Please check the description to download the right file for your module (NX, TX2,…)

FirmwareAuvidea

• Open a terminal window (CTRL + ALT + T) on your Linux host PC and navigate to your download location

Device	Example
Host PC	cd <path_to_downloadeded_tar>

• Extract the tar.gz file you just downloaded

Device	Example
Host PC	tar xvzf bootloader.tar.gz
Terminal host PC

• Change directory to the extracted bootloader folder

Device	Example
Host PC	cd ./bootloader
Terminal host PC

Connect carrier board to host PC

1. Connect the system to the Linux host PC. Please use a USB 2.0 cable (micro-USB on the carrier board)

2. Connect your system to power

   • Apply correct Voltage to prevent damage

   • The system should start automatically and detect the host PC and enter the flashing state (also called force recovery mode)

     • In some cases, you have to manually enable flashing state by pressing or shorting pins before connecting to your power source. Please check the Pinout description of your product if you have to set a Jumper

     • If your Jetson has an already running image, you can use sudo reboot --force forced-recovery to reboot in to force recovery mode

3. Check that the connection is established with the “lsusb” command. You should find one entry with “Nvidia Corp.” as highlighted below

Device	Example
Host PC	lsusb
Terminal host PC example

Your system is now connected properly and ready to be flashed

Flashing of system

• Use the flashcmd script in the extracted bootloader folder to transfer the software into the Jetson compute module and flash it

Device	Example
Host PC	sudo bash ./flashcmd.txt
Terminal host PC

• Please connect a monitor to the system. After the flashing process has completed, the system will automatically boot and show the Ubuntu desktop or the first setup screen

Device	Example
HDMI monitor Jetson system after following the first setup

You now have a functioning system ready for your needs.

Maintaining functionality

After successful flashing please be aware that if you use “sudo apt-get upgrade” some applied changes performed in this guide (Bootloader, Kernels, DTBs, …) will be overwritten by standard Nvidia packages. This will most probably brick some board functionality and some interfaces may not work correctly anymore.

When overriding the Auvidea configurations only basic functionality like 1080p HDMI, some USB ports, Ethernet could work

Without the correct configurations and packages 4k HDMI, PCIe ports, some USB ports, CSI, CAN, … will not work!

If you know what you are doing, you can exclude the Nvidia Debian packages from the Nvidia sources.list from being updated. This prevents overriding relevant files and changes.

If you are unsure, we recommend DO NOT UPGRADE YOUR SYSTEM.

In the case you accidental upgraded your system and some board functionality stopped working correctly, we recommend to reflash your system according to this guide.

using sudo apt-get upgrade will stop your carrier board from working correctly!

Installing additional NVIDIA SDK components

• Now you can install additional NVIDIA SDK components. Please connect the system to the Internet. Open a terminal window on the system (CTRL ALT T). Use apt-get to install the components. If this fails, please check the Internet connection of the system

Device	Example
Jetson system	install_jetpack.sh sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install nvidia-jetpack
Terminal Jetson system (example)