Flashing Auvidea NVIDIA Jetson TX2 NX

Please follow these instructions when the GB Support team have requested you to update your Auvidea NVIDIA Jetson TX2 NX image locally through the NVIDIA USB flashing protocol.

Pre-requisites

  1. Local physical access to the Auvidea NVIDIA Jetson TX2 NX
  2. USB A-Male to Micro B cable which is capable of carrying data (not just for power as you get with most consumer electronics).
  3. x86 Laptop or PC, with a USB port, and running a compatible version of the Ubuntu Linux distribution. At the time of documenting these steps have been confirmed using Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish), although other Ubuntu versions maybe compatible.

Hosting Ubuntu

  • The best option for stability and performance is to operate Ubuntu directly as the bear metal OS hosted on the Laptop/PC.

  • Using a guest VM for Ubuntu is not recommended. There are documented issues regarding the various VM configurations required to successfully support USB pass-through from the host to guest VM, this stems from the repeated disconnects and reconnects encountered as part of the flashing procedure.

    If the bear metal Ubuntu OS is not an option, for reference, the Great Bear support team have successfully flashed the Auvidea device via a VM using the following approach:

    • Host: Intel x86 Mac running Monterey 12.5.1 (Note: this same approach does not work on host Windows OS installations)
    • Guest VM: Virtual Box, Ubuntu (64 bit) VM built from the Ubuntu 22.04.1 ISO server image.
    • Guest VM Configuration:
      • VM Ports - With the Auvidea device connected to the host OS USB port, configure the VirtualBox VM settings to Enable USB Controller and select NVIDIA Corp.APX from the available list.
      • VM OpenSSH server - Ensure the VM has OpenSSH Server installed and running to support an ssh connection from the host to the VM.
    • From the host, ssh into the VM.

Flashing Steps

  1. Open a command terminal prompt on the Ubuntu OS.
  2. Using the credentials and URL provided by the Great Bear support team, download the new device image:
curl -LOJk --user <username> https://files.greatbear.io/dist/gbeos/tegra/latest/<image-file-name>.tar.gz
Enter host password for user <username>:
  1. Extract the image archive:
tar -xvf <image-file-name>.tar.gz
  1. Change directory to the path of the extracted archive, this directory will contain a doflash.sh file.
  2. Power down the Auvidea device.
  3. Use the USB cable to connect the Auvidea device to the x86 computer running Ubuntu.
  4. Power up the Auvidea device with the cable connected, the device will automatically enter into a recovery mode.
  5. From the Ubuntu terminal, run the command: lsusb and confirm the resulting output lists a USB device called NVidia Corp
lsusb
Bus 002 Device 001: ID ... Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID ... NVidia Corp.
  1. Trigger the flashing of the Auvidea device by executing the command:
sudo ./doflash.sh
  1. After a few minutes of flashing the EMMC, the Auvidea device will reboot, and you should see the following success message:
[ ] ...
[ ] Flashing completed

[ ] Coldbooting the device
[ ] tegradevflash_v2 --reboot coldboot
[ ] Bootloader version 01.00.0000
  1. The next steps depend upon the type of image the Great Bear support team have provided, this will be communicated by the support team as part of supplying the image url.
  • Device On-boarding image: Contact the support team to confirm the image has been flashed successfully and to trigger the next on-boarding steps.
  • Standard Great Bear Software update image: The device will reboot and resume from the previous operational state.

If you experience any problems with these steps, then please contact the Great Bear Support Team.