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Getting Started with Nvidia Jetson Nano, TensorFlow and Smalltalk

Mariano Martinez Peck on September 05, 2019

On all my previous posts (like this one) you can see VASmalltalk running on any Raspberry Pi, on Rock64 and even on Nvidia Jetson TX2: // Det...

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Dustin Franklin • Sep 6 '19 • Edited

Hi Mariano, cool blog! Apologies for the VNC thing - we made some updates in the latest JetPack 4.2.1 (L4T R32.2). If you check the README-vnc.txt file in the L4T-README drive on the Nano or that pops up when you connect your Nano to host computer over micro USB, it includes simplified instructions to bring up VNC.

For convenience, here is also a link to README-vnc.txt on Gist: gist.github.com/dusty-nv/0329cd330...

Hope that helps!

Mariano Martinez Peck • Sep 6 '19

Hi Dustin,
Thanks for the reply. Very much appreciated. And sorry if it seem harsh from my side, but I was trying to be honest.
Now, the image I have burn is jetson-nano-sd-r32.2-2019-07-16.zip. Isn't that the same you are talking about? In other words, I think I am using the latest one.
As for the README-vnc.txt yes, I saw it also when connected to it and it did help. However, there are 2 things that I haven't seen any solution:

Change the resolution when connecting to vino (default 640x480 sucks), hence my workaround described in the post.
The compiz crash when via VNC you go to Settings -> Display. Are these fixed anywhere? I would be happy to open an issue if you tell me where. Thanks in advance,

Dustin Franklin • Sep 6 '19

Thanks for pointing out those two issues Mariano. We are looking into the Settings -> Display tool and will update the next version of the README-vnc.txt document with instructions to change the resolution. Appreciate the feedback!

Mariano Martinez Peck • Sep 6 '19

Excellent! Thanks a lot Dustin for taking into account my feedback. Very much appreciated! IMHO the Nano is a great product...it just needs to polish the OS a bit.
Best,

#benaryorg • Sep 7 '19

I'll admit I just skimmed the article, but is there any reason in specific you connected via VNC (as opposed to SSH, possibly with X11-Forwarding)?

Mariano Martinez Peck • Sep 7 '19

Hi,
For this particular case, I prefer VNC over X11 forwarding. The reasons?

In this case, the app (VASmalltalk) runs much faster via VNC than via X11 forward. Yes, even with a good ssh cipher, compression, etc.
Sometimes its not just one app I want to run but some menus, or setting or some GUI stuff that I don't know what's the command line program associated to it...So I don't know how to run that from the terminal.
Many times I want to take screenshots. If I take a screenshot with my app being render with Quarts on my OSX, its not super clear that that is running a target machine and I am doing X11 forwarding. Instead, if I show a screenshot of the whole OS running on the target (via VNC), its super clear what's happening.

I may have other reasons, but those are the ones on top of my head now. I think that while X11 forwarding is cool, when doing IoT, Edge Computing, SBC, etc... having VNC is a must have.

Best,

#benaryorg • Sep 7 '19

Those are some really good reasons.
I'm coming from a "plain" sysadmin background so nothing I work with even has an X-server running (mostly containers anyway), hence I was wondering.

On the command line I usually stick to asciinema (over screen-shotting my terminal), but seeing the whole OS around it to make clear what machine this has to be run on is a good point that I should definitely think of more often myself.

Mariano Martinez Peck • Sep 8 '19

So it seems we agree. The right tool for each problem :)
Thanks for sharing asciinema, I wasn't awareness of it.