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Nvidia's $99 Jetson Nano Is an AI Computer for DIY Enthusiasts

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141–150 of 218 posts

Re: Nvidia's $99 Jetson Nano Is an AI Computer for DIY Enthusiasts

#141
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to differ, I think this is twisted by an era where liberal market was held as god like status. Take the rubber and metal out because for now. To draw a dark line on a surface, you take the first bit of wood you find, grind it into a point and burn it. You have a pencil. I really believe that the free market centuries made people believe it was the only or most efficient way to get an object done, just like peop…

You’ve moved the goal posts. It’s not that the construction of some thing, anything, that can be used to write with is difficult. As you point out a piece of charcoal isn’t hard to make. Milton Friedman’s point is that even something as simple and inexpensive as a pencil involves people all over the world working together to create it. Some mine graphite, some run ships to move the graphite, some manufacture paint, s…

The complexity of a modern economy is more about efficiency than anything else.

If you want a pencil that uses graphite and an eraser, that’s actually fairly easy to construct with the correct raw materials. A single person in the right location and with the right knowledge could have made a single pencil 1,000 years ago, though the pencil would not have been worth the effort. Further, they could not have made 100,000 of them where I could actually buy 100,000 pencils by being part of the modern economy.

Re: Nvidia's $99 Jetson Nano Is an AI Computer for DIY Enthusiasts

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at this lead pencil. There's not a single person in the world who could make this pencil. [0] [0]: Milton Friedman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5Gppi-O3a8

Sorry to differ, I think this is twisted by an era where liberal market was held as god like status. Take the rubber and metal out because for now. To draw a dark line on a surface, you take the first bit of wood you find, grind it into a point and burn it. You have a pencil. I really believe that the free market centuries made people believe it was the only or most efficient way to get an object done, just like peop…

Friedman's example is more an illustration that when we want to design a replacement for a working system, there is often a lot more complexity than expected - reinvented wheels are often square. Your example ends up with a piece of charcoal that doesn't have an eraser, gives you slivers, gets charcoal all over, has to be burnt every time you need to sharpen it (with a market-produced lighter or matches), doesn't work with pencil sharpeners, and smells like smoke instead of that "freshly sharpened pencil" smell (yeah, that's a thing).

Your re-invented wheel is square.

Yes, Friedman wants us to examine how the market works - because it works better for these complex coordinations than any other system we've devised. The market has facilitated the discovery and communication of the user requirements, and the price mechanism has coordinated the work of all the producers/transporters/exchangers of all the raw ingredients and intermediate products as well as the final product, and has enabled an ecosystem that produces compatible pencil sharpeners, grips, etc.

And did anyone ever think Java EE was the only way? That was much more an example of a designed system to replace the messy evolved world of CGI/Perl/PHP.

Re: Nvidia's $99 Jetson Nano Is an AI Computer for DIY Enthusiasts

#144
post #128
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tried "search in page" for NVMe, no luck. Not sure what you're seeing.

Weird. I opened it in reader mode. Doesn't seem to be on the normal page. It's a screenshot, maybe a draft? https://www.nvidia.com/content/dam/en-zz/Solutions/pattern-l...

The "PCIe x 16" probably means that goes with one of the previous, much more expensive, Jetson boards.

This $99 Jetson appears to have no direct support for any type of M.2 drive. Maybe some M.2E PCIe to SATA adapter board, if such a thing exists.

Re: Nvidia's $99 Jetson Nano Is an AI Computer for DIY Enthusiasts

#145
post #106
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends which component, maybe speakers or headphones, but there seem to be top-quality open-source DACs that are very cheap to assemble or buy assembled. A google search should turn them up. Last time I researched it, I found the headphone DAC that I'd buy if I wanted one, but I can't find it now. It had an interesting story around it. It was released anonymously in a blog and then suddenly, after posting dozens of…

That's NwAvGuy and the ODAC/O2 units. I think "audiophile grade" is an ill-defined target there. You can get headphones like the Superlux HD668B for practically nothing (they were running under $30 at one point), and they sound pretty damned good for a pair of $30 headphones. When I was a kid you paid $30 for a pair of crappy discman headphones let alone a nice pair of over-ear. Meanwhile you've got the name brand Au…

I have good but not audiophile-level gear at home which has been incrementally added to or replaced over the years. TBH, if I were starting over today for whatever reason, I'd probably buy some Sonos equipment or something along those lines and call it a day.

Re: Nvidia's $99 Jetson Nano Is an AI Computer for DIY Enthusiasts

#146

I am continually amazed that we're able to buy better and cheaper processors that no one could have dreamed about at such power/cost 50 years ago. I estimate it would take me and you maybe 1 year to learn how to build / assemble most things you find in your house that cost $1000 in a store -- a couch, a rug, even a simple kitchen appliance (the dumb kind). But a CPU / computer? I could not invent that given 10,000 ye…

There was a guy that decided to make a toaster from scratch [0]. Literally from scratch: as in, mining and refining ore, etc. It was a bit of a stunt [1], but it definitely highlighted the advantage of scale and industry we typically take for granted.

[0] - http://www.thetoasterproject.org/page2.htm

[1] - https://gizmodo.com/one-mans-nearly-impossible-quest-to-make...

Re: Nvidia's $99 Jetson Nano Is an AI Computer for DIY Enthusiasts

#147
post #106
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends which component, maybe speakers or headphones, but there seem to be top-quality open-source DACs that are very cheap to assemble or buy assembled. A google search should turn them up. Last time I researched it, I found the headphone DAC that I'd buy if I wanted one, but I can't find it now. It had an interesting story around it. It was released anonymously in a blog and then suddenly, after posting dozens of…

That's NwAvGuy and the ODAC/O2 units. I think "audiophile grade" is an ill-defined target there. You can get headphones like the Superlux HD668B for practically nothing (they were running under $30 at one point), and they sound pretty damned good for a pair of $30 headphones. When I was a kid you paid $30 for a pair of crappy discman headphones let alone a nice pair of over-ear. Meanwhile you've got the name brand Au…

I agree with you, and really wonder if amelius was saying the same thing. The price/quality has improved tremendously, but the price/"audiophile brand" hasn't.

Re: Nvidia's $99 Jetson Nano Is an AI Computer for DIY Enthusiasts

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at this lead pencil. There's not a single person in the world who could make this pencil. [0] [0]: Milton Friedman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5Gppi-O3a8

There's the guy who spent $1500 and six months making a sandwich from scratch[0], including growing, collecting and killing the ingredients [0]: https://youtu.be/URvWSsAgtJE

[deleted]

Re: Nvidia's $99 Jetson Nano Is an AI Computer for DIY Enthusiasts

#149
post #92

I am continually amazed that we're able to buy better and cheaper processors that no one could have dreamed about at such power/cost 50 years ago. I estimate it would take me and you maybe 1 year to learn how to build / assemble most things you find in your house that cost $1000 in a store -- a couch, a rug, even a simple kitchen appliance (the dumb kind). But a CPU / computer? I could not invent that given 10,000 ye…

Everyone's missing his point. Yes you could make a computer but an absolute toy compared to a Jetson. You could reasonably get close to the other technologies including a fridge compressor given a year of study. Your home built CPU isn't going to touch the Jetson.

I doubt you'd even get as far as hand-making the brushless motor that powers the compressor. And that's just the start - the fluid dynamics to design an efficient compressor is years of study in itself.

It's easy to underestimate the complexity of everyday things. But note that fridges are 100 years old, and today's fridges are much better than the fridges of 100 years ago. It took the collective effort of the human race 100 years to get this far.

Re: Nvidia's $99 Jetson Nano Is an AI Computer for DIY Enthusiasts

#150
post #4

Hope it'll ship with better support that the first Jetson. The one they marketed with all that AI/Machine Vision stuff and then shipped without a camera driver. This is just following Google's Edge TPU, which probably competes with a Raspberry Pi + Movidius stick. The market there is getting interesting.

What's the market or use case for these camera drivers? It seems like the fancy direct-to-chip camera connections and driver development would be better aimed at sensor manufacturers, not hobbyists trying to build simple vision algorithms.

Why wouldn't you use the Ethernet port with a traditional GigE camera? I've also done some simple projects using an ordinary USB webcam.

I'm interested in this as a small form factor industrial computer. I've run Raspberry Pis and Intel NUCs in lots of manufacturing equipment where you need something that can run a few lines of Python and sit between the PLC and your device. Given this board's processing power, it might be interesting to plug into a little Dalsa or Basler camera and run a vision algorithm. You can already buy simple "vision sensors" from Keyence, Banner, Sick, etc. that integrate what I understand to be a simple ARM chip with the vision sensor and run basic vision algorithms, but they're often hamstrung by the tooling. The ability to perform and communicate results of arbitrary commands in applications where you don't need lots of processing power would be great.

What camera applications are people builidng that need 1.5 Gbps of camera data? I've built assembly lines that build several parts per second and never even come close to being limited by frame rate or network bandwidth.

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