OAK & NVIDIA Jetson

Connecting OAK devices to NVIDIA Jetson SBCs unleashes powerful edge AI capabilities. To install the DepthAI library on a Jetson device, follow the steps to install dependencies and the library itself through pip. DepthAI provides prebuilt wheels for Jetson on PyPi.

Jetson Nano

Installing DepthAI on Jetson

To install DepthAI on Jetson Nano or Jetson Xavier, perform the following steps, after completing a fresh install and setup. On the first log in, do not immediately run updates.

This first step is optional: go to the Software (App Store) and delete the apps or software that you probably will not use.

  1. Open a terminal window and run the following commands:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
sudo reboot now

  1. Change the size of your SWAP. These instructions come from the Getting Started with AI on Jetson from Nvidia:

# Disable ZRAM:
sudo systemctl disable nvzramconfig
# Create 4GB swap file
sudo fallocate -l 4G /mnt/4GB.swap
sudo chmod 600 /mnt/4GB.swap
sudo mkswap /mnt/4GB.swap

If you have an issue with the final command, you can try the following:

sudo vi /etc/fstab

# Add this line at the bottom of the file
/mnt/4GB.swap swap swap defaults 0 0

# Reboot
sudo reboot now

  1. Install depthai dependencies

sudo wget -qO- https://docs.luxonis.com/install_dependencies.sh | bash

  1. Create a python virtual environment

sudo apt install python3-venv
python3 -m venv depthai
source depthai/bin/activate

Note

Before installing depthai, make sure you’re in the virtual environment.

  1. Clone the DepthAI repository and install the library

#Clone github repository
git clone https://github.com/luxonis/depthai-python.git
cd depthai-python
python3 examples/install_requirements.py

  1. Last step is to edit .bashrc with the line:

echo "export OPENBLAS_CORETYPE=ARMV8" >> ~/.bashrc

This should take care of all the dependencies and install the DepthAI library. You can now run the examples and use the DepthAI library on your Jetson device.

Powering OAK from Jetson

Jetson devices can generally provide sufficient power to OAK cameras directly via USB, thanks to their robust power supply systems. However, if you encounter stability issues or plan to connect multiple USB devices, consider using an externally powered USB hub or powering the OAK device through the Y-adapter.

Interface Options

If you’re working headlessly with the Jetson, you can SSH into it similarly to the Raspberry Pi. Ensure that SSH is enabled (it is by default on most Jetson images):

ssh username@jetson_ip_address

Replace username with your Jetson’s username (default is usually jetson or nvidia) and jetson_ip_address with the device’s IP address.

If you’re using a Jetson with a graphical interface, you can use X11 forwarding to display GUI elements on your local machine. To do this, use the -X flag when SSHing into the Jetson:

ssh username@jetson_ip_address -X

Alternatively, you can use VNC to access the Jetson’s graphical interface remotely. To enable VNC, go to Settings > Sharing > Screen Sharing and enable the service. Then, use a VNC client to connect to the Jetson’s IP address.