[Unboxing Review] Industrial-grade edge AI gateway equipped with NVIDIA Jetson series: Advantech EPC-R7200

Developers who have used NVIDIA Jetson know that Jetson itself is a system on module (SOM), but it will be connected to a carrier board to make it a complete circuit system, which can then be used for learning, development and verification. Once the development and verification are completed, the Jetson module can be flexibly matched with different carrier boards according to the needs of different applications. For example, it can be replaced with a carrier board that can connect multiple cameras for video monitoring, or replaced with a carrier board with a CAN Bus interface for use in vehicle systems.

After selecting the carrier board, the next step is to embed it into the actual application environment or application system. The environment may be an open farm or under a bridge, and the system may be a drone or unmanned guided vehicle. At this time, the circuit system must choose a mechanical peripheral, or embed it into the original chassis shell of the aircraft or guided vehicle, or change the chassis peripheral design for this purpose.

Meeting the development flexibility of edge AI applications

In response to the above needs, Advantech has launched an EPC-R7200 gateway system, which is also the subject of this unboxing introduction. This EPC-R7200 already has a Jetson carrier board and a shell chassis, and it is an industrial control grade chassis. As long as the Jetson module is placed in the set position or system, the complete system is realized.

EPC-R7200 internal circuit board and carrier board, put the Jetson module in and it is complete

Because Jetson uses a flexible combination design of "module + carrier board", the gateway system design of EPC-R7200 not only considers the adaptability of three Jetson modules (Jetson TX2 NX, Jetson Xavier NX, Jetson Nano) in the hardware design of the carrier board, but also implements software integration and testing verification to ensure that users can choose different Jetson modules to install in the gateway system according to different application scenarios. At the same time, because the power consumption of the three Jetson modules is different, EPC-R7200 also provides three heat sinks as accessories. Users can easily replace different Jetson modules to improve the performance of artificial intelligence computing, or use more economical modules.

The EPC-R7200 can be configured with a Jetson Nano (top), Jetson Xavier NX (center), or Jetson TX2 NX (bottom), and has a corresponding heat sink. The leftmost is the thermal paste.

For NVIDIA, it only needs to focus on the production and sales of Jetson, and invites ecosystem partners to participate in the carrier board and chassis. As of April 2022, NVIDIA has officially announced 107 carrier boards, 19 open systems, and 278 complete systems. What are the outstanding features of the EPC-7200 gateway system (carrier board + shell chassis) in many combinations? This article will disassemble and observe them one by one.

EPC-R7200 housing, front I/O panel

First, from the outside, the EPC-R7200 is compact, with dimensions of only 15.2 x 13.7 x4.2 cm. It can be so light and small thanks to the specially designed heat sink. The Jetson module used in the general development stage has a tall heat sink, but the EPC-R7200 uses a low heat sink instead. The top of the heat sink is attached to the top cover of the case, which transfers the heat to the entire case to achieve heat dissipation. Because of the high reduction in volume (reduced volume), the EPC-R7200 has greater scene applicability and can be installed in extremely small environmental spaces, or directly installed in small systems, with almost no need to change the system design. It can also be fixed on the DIN rail commonly used in factories.

Advantech EPC-R7200 system has various connectors and housing designs

As can be seen from the above picture, the front I/O panel of EPC-R7200 has a power access port, 2 USB ports (USB 3.2 standard), 2 GbE LAN ports, 1 HDMI 2.0 output, and 2 LEDs. In terms of power, EPC-R7200 can use 9~24V DC power, which can be driven by a normal car battery. 2 USB ports may be considered too few, after all, development kits have 3 or 4 ports, but there is another solution to this problem, which will be introduced in detail later; the 2 LAN ports are also somewhat special, because most development kits only have 1 port, which will also be explained later.

HDMI can output 4K resolution (3840 x 2160) at a frequency of 60Hz; on the LED, one power indicator will light up when the EPC-R7200 is running, and the other can be defined by the developer.

EPC-R7200 exterior, bottom cover

There are RESET hole and antenna hole (ANT) on the outside, and USB-OTG port, Micro SD card slot and Nano SIM card slot inside the cover.

There is a reset (RESET) hole on the right side panel of EPC-R7200, which can be restarted by piercing it with a thin pointed object; then there is a cover fastened with screws. After removing the cover, there are three items, namely 1 USB 2.0 OTG port (which can only allow Jetson to play the role of a device-type controlled device, not a master control role), 1 MicroSD memory card slot, and 1 Nano SIM card slot. In addition, you can see 2 higher holes on the side, and there are also holes on the other side, a total of 4 holes, which can be used to install wireless transceiver antennas.

Inside the bottom cover are the debug port (lower right), recovery button (bottom), M.2 2230 Key E slot (upper right), and M.2 3042 Key B slot (left)

The bottom of the EPC-R7200 also has a cover that is screwed like a side door. After opening it, there are four items, namely the debug port (Debug Port/Console Port), the recovery key (Recovery Key/Button), the M.2 2230 Key E slot, and the M.2 3042 Key B slot. The debug port is for developers to use, the recovery key is a system recovery method that can be used when restarting does not work, the Key E slot is used to connect the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth communication module daughter cards, and the Key B slot is used to connect the WWAN wireless network communication module daughter card. The aforementioned Nano SIM card is also related to this module.

EPC-R7200 rear I/O flexible expansion

The connector of the EPC-R7200 internal carrier board can be flexibly connected to different UIO40-Express I/O expansion boards, and there are corresponding EPC-R7200 rear I/O panels. (Source: Advantech)

As mentioned earlier, only two USB ports seem to be insufficient, so the rear I/O panel becomes the place to play. The EPC-R7200 has another set of pins on the carrier board, which can be used with Advantech's UIO40-Express series I/O expansion board to configure more I/O ports. For example, you can place more LAN ports, more USB ports, or RS-232 ports and RS-485 ports commonly used in the industrial control field, CAN ports commonly used in automotive electronics, or connect to NVMe protocol solid-state drives (SSDs) through the M.2 Key M slot, or even I2C interfaces or general GPIOs.

EPC-R7200 logic block diagram, the blue part is the I/O interface, the orange part is the chip used for the carrier board and the interface connected to the Jetson module. (Source: Advantech)

In general, the EPC-R7200 carrier board has been expanded in many ways for the Jetson module, such as using Intel I210 to convert the Jetson PCIe interface into an actual LAN port, or using USB 2.0 Hub chips and USB 3.2 Gen2 Hub chips to expand the original USB interface of Jetson, or using transceiver chips to convert the UART interface of the Jetson module into an actual RS-232 interface. In addition, the MIPI-CSI interface designed for image sensing and display is still available.

It should be added that, in fact, the Jetson module itself has a set of RGMII interface to realize a set of LAN port. As mentioned before, the other set of LAN port is realized through the PCIe interface of the Jetson module. However, the number of PCIe on the Jetson Nano module is insufficient, so only one set of LAN port can be used.

Practical application: The wafer foundry industry also pays for it

After understanding the specifications and design of EPC-R7200, what is more important is its actual application? Currently, EPC-R7200 has been used in many applications, such as traffic monitoring, where images can be recorded and license plates can be identified for illegal vehicles; or it can be used for face recognition to identify whether a mask is worn to assist in epidemic prevention, or for self-service check-out at unmanned hotels, or for AI endoscope images of pets. Or, as German machine manufacturers use it for smart agriculture, through AI recognition, precise spraying is carried out on the spot, spraying herbicides only on weeds and avoiding crops; Japan also uses it in smart robots for agricultural work.

Finally, we will take Taiwan's wafer manufacturing foundry business as an example to explain in detail that wafers need to be transported during the wafer manufacturing process, and they must be transported very carefully to avoid damage to the delicate wafers, so a wafer transport vehicle, or wafer transfer robot, is needed. In fact, this type of automatic transport vehicle plays an important role in various factories. In the past, the most common one was the AGV automatic guided vehicle, and now the more intelligent transport vehicle is called the AMR autonomous mobile robot.

In this case, the AMR is equipped with EPC-R7200, and then the UART/RS-232 interface is used to control the moving wheels, two USB ports are used to connect the camera to monitor the external environment and object movement, and one USB port is used to connect Wi-Fi/Bluetooth communication so that it can receive assigned handling tasks. In addition, the PCIe interface and CAN interface are used to control the handling arm. In order to access and implement the CAN interface and UART/RS-232 interface, the UIO-4034 expansion card of Advantech's UIO40-Express I/O series is also used.