It looks like the details of the Kit for the VEX AI Competition have been released! You can find the details in the knowledge base article:
The summary is:
The hardware is off the shelf and largely the same as the initial kit in the Pilot from around 3 years ago.
It will be available as a kit from VEX though if you don’t want to buy everything individually yourself.
Exception: The FLIR camera for reading the GPS strip has been replaced with the VEX GPS unit
Hardware details
2x V5 Robot Radios: for communication with other robots as well as connecting to VEX Link to view the Dashboard.
2x NVIDIA Jetson Nano: used to operate the cameras and AI software.
2x Micro SD Card with VEX AI Software: to be placed inside of the Jetson to ensure the AI hardware works with the AI software.
2x Cable for Jetson Nano to V5 Brain: to connect the Jetson to the V5 Brain.
2x VEX 3-Wire Connector to Barrel Plug Cable: to power the Jetson via the V5 Brain.
6x USB A to Micro Cables 18-inch: to connect the V5 Brain to the Jetson. Note that only one cable will be used per V5 Robot. The remaining 4 cables will be replacements if needed.
2x Intel Dual Band Wi-Fi for Jetson Nano: to connect the WI-FI Antennas to the Jetson.
4x Wi-Fi Antennas: to be connected on the Intel Dual Band Wi-Fi for Jetson Nano.
2x Cooling Fan for Jetson Nano: to ensure the Jetson does not overheat.
2x Intel D435 RealSense Depth Camera: to read the color and distance of objects on the field.
The software on the Jetson side of things has been rewritten and documented, and is now Open Source!
The jetson code is almost all python, and uses standard software which can easily be modified - a great learning opportunity.
There is also example code available for the V5 brain that interfaces with the jetson over USB
Pricing is unknown at this point as the kit is still not listed on VEX’s website - but at least this time there aren’t any DRM USB keys, so you’re free to purchase the components of the kit yourself.
This is great. Unfortunate it’s not the year after the pilot season when teams were begging to do VEX AI using the Jetson board. Missed opportunity. Hopefully VEX AI can gain some momentum now especially with the silly hardware lock getting binned.
I have Jetson with the depth camera already, and just need the VEX 3-Wire Connector to Barrel Plug Cable: to power the Jetson via the V5 Brain. Can someone help me where to get this cable ? I can’t seem to order it from the Vex website.
I don’t believe it is separately available, maybe @mbeem can confirm.
It should be very easy to make yourself though, or as a (higher power) alternative you could power the jetson off a 5v battery bank or with some custom electronics, off a smart port.
From the picture, it looks like two 2-wire cables fused with a barrel plug cable. Can I simply connect the red wires from the 2x 2-wire cable to the red wire of the barrel plug, and do the same for the black wires?
That seems right, you would probably want to double check the polarity before plugging in the jetson nano though.
I will say again though that this is not an ideal way to power the jetson, the ADI ports are quite limited in the power they can supply, and the jetson actually has to throttle its performance when running off of the ADI. You would probably be better off with a USB battery bank or a voltage regulator off a smart port.
We achieved about 5min runtime with the V5 powering a robot and the Jetson Nano + cameras. Use a separate power source for the Nano and then you don’t need to run it in power limited mode either.
I can go digging the AI archives here and find this cable to confirm but it’s literally just the red and black wires from 2x 3-wire ports paralleled together and wired into a DC plug. Total current available from the 8x 3-wire ports is 2A @ 5V so you’re drawing 1A from each of the 2 ports using this adapter cable.
Update:
It looks like the AI kit has been made available for purchase! The price is $1500 for the components mentioned in the OP.
This is a decent price for a ready-to-go set of off-the-shelf parts, especially given the inflation that has happened in the last few years. I’m glad to see that VEX is taking VAIRC seriously, and I’m excited to see how the program expands.
From my understanding all Orin models are quite a bit more powerful than the jetson nano used here, so it would work from a compute perspective. You would probably have to modify the image to deal with any orin specific things though.
The custom cable is pretty simple. The 3-wire connector side is just that. The white wire and contact was removed. Under the heat shrink tube, it’s red + red + tip of the barrel connector wire. And, black + black + the outside of the barrel connector wire.
