Nvidia Jetson Nano Ad Hoc Network Configuration and Network Card Installation - SmartAsphalt159/smart_asphalt GitHub Wiki

Equipment Utilized

  • Nvidia Jetson Nano Rev2 or 4GB varient
  • Intel Wireless AC8265 NIC
  • Antenna

Card Installation

To install the card, it does not require any driver installation. First be sure to attach the antennas to the card, this does require placing a large amount of pressure to get the antenna ends to fit in their slots on the card. Once that is done, simply remove the heat sink from the Nvidia Jetson Nano and below it you will see an area to insert the card. You will need to unscrew the holder screw to install the card and secure it after. Once all of this is done the card will be installed and be able to detect the local networks.

This link will show a video of how to install the card Card Installation Youtube Video

Ad-Hoc Network Configuration

To configure an Ad-Hoc network on the Nvidia Jetson Nano, its quite simple and follows the debian configuration setup as well. Below is the set of instructions to follow and that were used by our team.

  1. Open up a terminal and type sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces, this should open up a almost empty file. (note you can use any text editor to open the file)
  2. Interfaces is where we will configure the network behavior at startup, its suggested to comment out any existing configuration to not interfere with the new changes.
  3. Add these lines to the interfaces file to enable Ad-Hoc:
auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet static
    address 100.100.1.2
    netmask 255.255.255.0
    wireless-channel 1
    wireless-essid carnet
    wireless-mode ad-hoc

In the example above note that the interface we used was called wlan0 if you have multiple interfaces then you should verify which device is being used with the ifconfig command. Also note that the ip and netmask address were examples utilize whichever scheme is best and ensure each device has a unique ip, this method is for static ip assignment. You can use other channels than 1 but ensure that all devices use the same channel. The essid can be any name, but all devices must share the same.

  1. You must restart the Jetson Nano for the changes to take effect, in this case you will not have internet access after restart. Use sudo reboot.
  2. Once restarted go back to the terminal and run ifconfig do you see the address that was specified for wlan0. if you do then the changes have been made. If not their may be an issue with the interfaces file.
  3. Type iwconfig and see if wlan0 is in ad-hoc mode and has a cell address assigned along with the other correct parameters as specified.

The setup is complete!

Testing and Connecting to Another Device on same Ad-Hoc network

Assuming that two devices have been configured to connect on the same Ad-Hoc network, we can test if they can communicate.

  1. Start both devices turned off
  2. Start one device and make sure that it's network interface is on by typing iwconfig into the terminal. If you see all is their then continue if you see nothing or items appear wrong correct them. (Note: Pay attention to the cell address)
  3. Start the other device afterwards and verify with iwconfig again if everything started correctly. Here pay attention to the cell address and verify both devices share the same cell address.

If both devices do not, we must trouble shoot, on one device run sudo iwlist wlan0 scan this should help the device find the correct cell address to utilize. If this does not work restart the device you ran the iwlist command on and see if it gets the address.

  1. Once devices have the same cell address and information, to test if they see each other, ping them utilizing the ping command, you should receive immediate feedback and responses.

The Test Is Complete!

Card Configuration Features

The Intel AC8265 has many features that can be enabled and disabled however in the debian Jetson Tegra environment not all these features are effected.

iwconfig is a common command that allows for card characteristic features to be modified. For instance transmission power, bit-rate, etc can be affected by this, for more in depth information on the command you can view more detail at Computerhope.

To modify the transmission power attenuation you can run iwconfig [interface] txpower [int]. An example is iwconfig wlan0 txpower 10.

Note: You do not need to restart for these changes to take effect, also setting txpower to 0 will turn off the interface.

Wiki Authors

  • Adrian Osorio (Undergraduate CSE)
  • Andrew Kettle (Undergraduate CPE)