A few months ago, we announced our open hardware Jetson AGX Thor Baseboard targeting NVIDIA’s latest Jetson AGX Thor T5000 SoM, but also providing compatibility with the T4000 variant. Since then, we’ve been working on improving and bringing this design to life, aiming to provide a flexible but powerful platform for industrial applications.
Antmicro’s Jetson AGX Thor Baseboard is modular and customizable by design, and can be optimized for heavy-duty applications for industrial automation, robotics, computer vision, AI inference, and more. Additionally, the board can be combined with Antmicro’s custom enclosure for ruggedized industrial-grade applications, with cooling aperture and thermal management that can be adjusted for a particular use case.
In this article we take a closer look at the capabilities offered by Antmicro’s Jetson AGX Thor Baseboard for robotics, AI, and industrial applications.
Open hardware Jetson AGX Thor Baseboard
The Jetson AGX Thor Baseboard features a range of I/O interfaces, including USB-C interfaces for connecting typical desktop peripherals, and an FMC+ expansion connector exposing PCIe x2, PCIe x1, DisplayPort, CAN, UART, SPI, and I2S. One of the USB-C ports can operate in ALT mode offering video (DisplayPort) output. Two USB-C ports support the Power Delivery (PD) feature offering up to 100W (20V/5A) power in source mode per port.
The baseboard is powered via a locking Molex connector which simplifies cabling. In the default configuration, the Thor Baseboard supports 24VDC of power input which is aligned with the industrial-grade power standard. The power supply voltage range can be easily adjusted for installations that operate at different power supply voltage standards.
Additionally, the baseboard provides two 50-pin FFC connectors exposing Camera Serial Interfaces (MIPI CSI-2) with pinout, which makes it electrically compatible with a variety of camera modules and video accessories developed by Antmicro. Those accessories include a range of camera adapters supporting various camera modules from Allied Vision, FRAMOS, Leopard Imaging, and more. In addition, the board is compatible with video converters that support HDMI, SDI, CVBS and GMSL. This allows for rapid prototyping of early proof-of-concept setups composed of the Antmicro Jetson AGX Thor Baseboard, cameras and video converters. An example PoC configuration of the Thor Baseboard combined with dual multi-channel GMSL deserializers is presented in our System Designer.
The interactive diagram below shows all the interfaces available on the board:
For an interactive version of the diagram, visit the desktop version of the website.
The design is open source and can be easily adjusted to a specific use case in terms of board dimensions, interfaces and layout. You can find detailed information about the board’s components and a Hardware Bill of Materials (HBOM) on our System Designer portal.
Custom enclosure for industrial applications
Antmicro’s Jetson AGX Thor Baseboard supports industrial power supplies (24V) via a locking connector, and provides a cooling aperture that allows for stacking multiple units in a cluster. It has a rectangular 100 x 180 mm (3.93 x 7.08 inch) PCB outline with power and I/O ports grouped along the shorter edge. This mechanical arrangement allows adjusting the board’s layout for a number of applications where space constraints and serviceability are important.
To facilitate the baseboard’s utilization in heavy-duty applications, Antmicro designed a ruggedized enclosure suitable for industrial environments. It includes a custom cooling solution with blower fans that enforce air flow through its longer axis.
The enclosure’s compact size and cuboid form make it easy to add fastening holes to the side walls in order to fit the setup in a custom control cabinet, robot or drone chassis. Additionally, the enclosure can feature mounting mechanisms for blade-server type of applications, guiding rails, and mounts for external accessories (such as cameras, sensors, lighting). The embedded blower fans can be easily replaced with axial ones and the cooling aperture can also be adjusted for liquid-cooling applications if required.
Antmicro provides end-to-end hardware development and validation services, and we followed this approach when designing the enclosure for the Jetson AGX Thor Baseboard. To ensure optimal passive cooling, we performed thermal simulation of the enclosure, using our automated, open source-driven flow.
As shown in the graph above, the enclosure can dissipate ∼130W while keeping the SoM at 70°C (158°F).
Running a Kenning demo on the Jetson AGX Thor Baseboard
To verify the correct operation of the Jetson AGX Thor Baseboard, we tested it with a demo running multiple vision models in parallel, which we described in more detail in a previous article. The demo uses ROS 2 as well as our open source Kenning framework. For information about running the demo, refer to this README.
Jetson Thor-based devices for industrial applications
Antmicro’s Jetson AGX Thor Baseboard provides a perfect starting point for developing custom devices built around the powerful Thor T5000 SoM, potentially also the T4000 variant. Thanks to its compact size and a dedicated enclosure, it’s suitable for both desktop and industrial applications. The baseboard and enclosure designs are fully customizable and we can help you adapt them to your specific use case.
If you would like to take advantage of our end-to-end hardware design process to develop your next Jetson Thor-based product, don’t hesitate to contact us at contact@antmicro.com.
