I installed a new power supply and fan on the Jetson Nano. Surprisingly, the fan alone really helped the stream quality. I could stream at 4K using the 2A microUSB connector, something I was having trouble with without the fan. The board must have been thermal throttling before.
With the new 4A 5V power supply, I eliminated the overcurrent throttling and can now use OpenCV with the THETA Z1 at 2K. There is still a fair bit of latency.
Realistically, the cheap $270 Ryzen 5700u mini-PC is performing much better. However, the NVIDIA Jetson Nano is much cheaper. I got this unit used for $104 with an included 64GB microSD card for the OS and free shipping.
With the power supply and the fan, the cost is:
| item | cost |
|---|---|
| used Jetson Nano 4GB RAM with 64GB microSD | $109 |
| Waveshare 5V PWM fan | $8.35 |
| Seed Studio 5VDC 4A power supply | $16.99 |
| total: | $134.34 |
Alternative to Small Board Computers for desktop testing
If you have the desk space, then something like this might be better.
The guy below performed the following upgrades to the 600 G4:
- i7 8700K CPU
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060
- 400w power supply p/n: 942332-001, which I see on eBay for $65.
additional information here
It seems like a used PC could open up the possibilities for upgrades. Original specifications on the unit are here. Chassis is 3.7 x 10.6 x 11.7in
The original power supply is 180W, so it won’t be able to power a reasonable discrete graphics card.
Opinions on Linux Computers for RICOH THETA Development
Although small computers are pretty attractive to conserve and desk space and storage, the lack of a discrete graphics card can be a problem. My laptop is a Asus Zephyrus G14. This computer is quite good with a discrete GeForce RTX GPU. However, the price is around $1,200 to $1,500 depending on configuration.
I also bought a Ryzen 7 5700u computer with 16GB DDR4 for $270, which is fine for light loads. The MiniPC has USB-C power input. There’s a nice review of a similar model here. There’s a $237 variant of the unit here.