# NVIDIA Tegra Jetson



## Phishfry (Nov 8, 2015)

I am looking at this Jetson TK1  board and it is on sale for half price with coupon code.
Any thoughts??
First tier 2 board I have seen with a mini-PCI-e slot.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/jetson-tk1-embedded-dev-kit.html

I see some work on it with custom patches.
https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-arm/2014-November/009554.html

Anybody using it or was it a flop?


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## Phishfry (Nov 8, 2015)

I saw this coupon code and tried to buy it.

Make Magazine: Jetson TK1 Promo | NVIDIA Developer

The Digital River store kept kicking out my address. Stupidist checkout I have ever seen. Court instead of Ct...

edit:finally got checked out. Had to use Internet explorer and debit card, instead of mozilla / Paypal...
Worst store experience but saved half price!! Backordered too what a chump.
Ended up costing $115 with tax and shipping.


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## Phishfry (Nov 8, 2015)

I don't know if I would have made it through the vendors tangled web store if it were not for this video.






The shipping Ubuntu looking pretty impressive.


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## acheron (Nov 8, 2015)

mmel@ is working on it: https://github.com/strejda/tegra


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## acheron (Nov 8, 2015)

Too bad they only ship to US.


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## Phishfry (Nov 8, 2015)

acheron said:


> Too bad they only ship to US.


I can help with that if you want one... Is this export control restrictions or what iI wonder. Quite odd...


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## Phishfry (Nov 8, 2015)

Spec wise this does look healthy, starting with 16GB eMMC and 2GB ram plus USB3.0. Bonus is the DB9 serial.


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## tingo (Nov 8, 2015)

acheron said:


> Too bad they only ship to US.


Yeah, I lost interest when I saw that.


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## Phishfry (Nov 8, 2015)

If their web store experience is anything like the board it will probably end up a paper weight. The youtube video is not that super for x86/amd64 but for ARM it looks real good... 12V power is a plus for me. I dislike the current 5V that maker boards use.
I could see the bitcoin miners using it for all those cores... OpenCV stuff sound interesting too. 
For a board that has been out for over a year it certainly has not made many waves.


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## Phishfry (Nov 14, 2015)

Well I got the board today via Fedex. Not bad for a backordered item. Had to give praise after badmouthing them so much.

It seems these are sold overseas it is just the Make Magazine discount that is not available.

I tried to buy 3 additional boards on the coupon code and it only applied the discount to one board. It did let me use the coupon code for a second order with one board.


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## goshanecr (May 15, 2016)

Friends, recently I see on svn-src-head@ that Michal Meloun send patches related to nvidia tegra.
I want to ask, is it helps get working FreeBSD system on Tegra2 based tablet? Such as http://www.cnet.com/products/viewsonic-corp-10s/specs/
It based on Nvidia Tegra 250 processor


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## Phishfry (May 15, 2016)

Due to the lack of console I would imagine a Arm Tablet to be a tough target to get working well. Getting it to boot, probably do-able but having it act like a typical tablet will be tough. You can see here the problems involved. Mainly touchscreen and Xorg. FreeBSD does not focus on desktops so you can see the conflict. Boot it to command prompt may be no problem but from there you have problems. First up most tablet have only one usb port, So you need a USB hub until you get a pointing device working in a graphical environment, If you are ambitious enough to get a Arm desktop running..

Sorry to be so blunt but this would be a tough one depending on expectations.
These devices all depend on Wifi and would that even be supported? I doubt it.


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## ronaldlees (Jul 15, 2016)

acheron said:


> Too bad they only ship to US.



This is one I can't quite get my head around.  It seems that just about every "US made" SoC based board, or small SBC board that is not Intel or AMD is "export controlled."  So, now you're saying the Tegra Jetson is in the same category? Anyway, I think the Chinese laugh at this kind of stuff.   Controlling imports I understand.  Controlling exports just shoots your economy.   Makes you wonder ...

 I looked at the Tegra, but too many people were saying (on forums) that they had stability problems using it with  Linux.  Maybe they've updated it since I last looked, but I was a little turned off ...


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## Phishfry (Jul 15, 2016)

Gonzo has FreeBSD working with the TK1
http://kernelnomicon.org/?p=628

I like that it has a miniPCIe slot and SATA.
Bigger than most ARM boards at NanoITX or 120mmx120mm

I will be glad to try FreeBSD on it.

I chose to upgrade the default install and I never had any stability problems. I really have not used it much so far.


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## ronaldlees (Jul 16, 2016)

Phishfry said:


> I chose to upgrade the default install and I never had any stability problems. I really have not used it much so far.



Thanks for the update.  Maybe I'll take another look ...


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## ThothK (Aug 3, 2016)

Hello People,

I have an NVidia Shield K1 and I want to do whatever is required to get FreeBSD running on it. The K1 uses the Nvidia Tegra K1 (which is why I am posting to this thread). The CPU is a Quad-core 2.2 GHz Cortex-A15 and it has a ULP GeForce Kepler GPU. 
If I can get FreeBSD to display console and pair it with a Bluetooth keyboard, that would be success. If I can get FreeBSD to start the SSHD and SSH to it as root (initially), then that would be acceptable.

I currently have MultiROM on it which allows me to boot to Linux4Tegra which I think is based on Ubuntu.

My initial problem is that I do not have the knowledge or experience to determine what a good plan is. 

I believe I need to start with UBoot. However, even after reading lots of stuff about UBoot, it feels like I am missing something. I do not know what this something might be.
I would love to be able to document the process in such a way that others can learn and apply the knowledge to similar situations. In order to do this, I need to learn the "whys".

I would like any useful advice, suggestions, references, URLs, etc. I have looked at all of the URLs in this thread.


thank you,



-thoth-


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## Phishfry (Aug 3, 2016)

Checkout all 3 parts of this primer:
https://www.bidouilliste.com/blog/2015/11/27/Porting-FreeBSD-to-a-new-ARM-Board-Part-1/

You should be able to pull from the two threads here all the pieces.
http://kernelnomicon.org/?p=628

Here is @mmel git repository with very recent commits:
https://github.com/strejda/tegra

Just because the board uses the same CPU there are no guarantees.
I would suggest mastering Linux4Tegra first.

The chances of your bluetooth keyboard working are not good.

https://wiki.freebsd.org/FlattenedDeviceTree


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## ThothK (Aug 14, 2016)

Hello Phishfry,

Thank you.

I had seen those before. I actually had a brief conversation with Emmanuel regarding getting FreeBSD on an Olimex A20 Lime.

While I have been using various distributions of Linux off and on over the last eighteen years or so, I have never focused on the kernel or the core, low level aspects of the OS. With the exception of what Crochet FreeBSD does, I have never compiled a linux or FreeBSD kernel.

I write software. From Low-level components and tools to high level user applications.

The company I work for has a new program that requires a custom SOC and some other stuff. After I move into that team, my function will be to build interfaces on top of the core OS.
I have been pushing and will continue to push for FreeBSD to be the basis of the core OS we will use. There is a bit of support for it. The first version of our HDK used a version of Ubuntu as a test platform.

In order to do what I will have to do, I want to understand the processes and requirements at a very low level. In my mind, step one is to understand what is involved with porting FreeBSD to a new architecture.
To me, this means that I need to understand the 'why' and 'how' as well as the 'what'.

Additionally, I think it would be a good idea for me to have a device that has FreeBSD as the OS. It should be something portable as I bounce between two locations quite a bit. Two of the Laptops I have are OSX and one is Windows 8.1. The servers I deal with are Redhat (don't ask). I chose the NVidia Shield K1 because Linux4Tigra was out, the bootloader was unlocked, and it appears that NVidia is supporting the concept of a *nix based OS on their device. I would like to use it as my daily FreeBSD device.

I apologize for over-describing this, but I wanted to fill in some of the gaps.


-thoth-


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## a59303 (Aug 18, 2016)

ThothK said:


> In order to do what I will have to do, I want to understand the processes and requirements at a very low level. In my mind, step one is to understand what is involved with porting FreeBSD to a new architecture.
> To me, this means that I need to understand the 'why' and 'how' as well as the 'what'.
> 
> Additionally, I think it would be a good idea for me to have a device that has FreeBSD as the OS. It should be something portable as I bounce between two locations quite a bit. Two of the Laptops I have are OSX and one is Windows 8.1. The servers I deal with are Redhat (don't ask). I chose the NVidia Shield K1 because Linux4Tigra was out, the bootloader was unlocked, and it appears that NVidia is supporting the concept of a *nix based OS on their device. I would like to use it as my daily FreeBSD device.
> ...



Maybe this might help
https://github.com/freebsd/crochet/blob/master/board/RaspberryPi/boot/README

a5'

I feel compelled to mention that I found this a long time ago, at least a year probably more and may not be relevant. Though I think it is.


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## Phishfry (Aug 19, 2016)

I was browsing through this document regarding FreeBSD 11 and noticed ARM has Tegra TK1 support. You might have to roll your own.
https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=296936


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## ThothK (Aug 28, 2016)

Hi a5',

I have actually seen that. However, I do not know enough to know what is generic and what is board specific. 
I did get some mileage from the CrochetFreeBSD::NewBoardExample readme.

I think I need to break the process down, starting with first steps. I am still trying to put the pieces together.

I am going to create a thread in 'Embedded' about this. It is kind-of cross posting but I have to start at square one, I think.


-thoth-


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## ThothK (Aug 28, 2016)

Hi Phishfry,

The question that came to mind was "what problems are being solved" with the NVidia Tegra support. The source tree implies what was done but not why it was done. I can infer certain issues that were solved, but I don't know enough yet to develop a course of action. 

I think with that source, I am going to start with finding out what Tegra 124 means.


Thank You, again.


-thoth-


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