Jetson Xavier NX and Nano carriers include a model with 5x SATA ports

Jetson Xavier NX and Nano carriers include a model with 5x SATA ports

Sep 24, 2021 — by Eric Brown

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Seeed has launched a pair of Leetop carrier boards for the Jetson Xavier NX and Nano: a $349 “A205” with 5x SATA, 5x USB, 2x GbE, and 6x CSI lanes, and a compact, $179 “A203” board with 40-pin GPIO.

Seeed is selling a pair of carrier boards from China-based Leetop that both support the Nvidia Jetson Nano and Jetson Xavier NX. The full-featured, $349 A205 board ships on Oct. 16, and the $179, ready-to-deploy A203 is available Sep. 30.

A205 (left) and A203
(click images to enlarge)

Leetop also offers a $199 A206 carrier on Seeed that you can check out on your own, which falls in between the two boards in terms of features. It has almost the same layout and features as Nvidia’s Jetson Xavier NX Developer Kit, but also supports the Jetson Nano. Compared to the official kit, the A206 adds a CAN header and RTC and offers dual HDMI instead of HDMI and DP.


A206 (left) and almost identical Nvidia Xavier NX dev kit with Xavier NX module
(click images to enlarge)

Price comparisons are a bit tricky, as the official $399 kit, which is currently out of stock, ships only with the non-eMMC version of the Xavier NX. The NX sells on its own for $479 with 16GB eMMC. It is also out of stock, although Seeed sells the same module for $20 more.

Leetop also resells Nvidia’s official Xavier NX and AGX Xavier dev kits, as well as its own A300 (Jetson TX2) and A200 (Jetson Nano) carriers and various embedded systems based on Linux-driven Jetson modules (see farther below.) The Leetop website has product pages for the A206 and a slightly different version of the A203, but not yet the A205.

A205

The A205, which we saw on CNXSoft, is designed for complex AI graphics applications. The 170 x 100mm carrier board is probably most feature rich Xavier NX or Nano carrier board we have seen, especially if you need a lot of SATA storage and do not require PoE. The board supplies 5x SATA ports for SSDs.

A205, front and back
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The A205 is equipped with 2x GbE, 2x HDMI 2.0, 4x USB 3.0, and a USB 2.0 Type C OTG port. You get 4-lane and 2-lane MIPI-CSI interfaces for 6x lanes overall, as well as a 3.5mm audio jack, 2x mic headers, and 2x speaker headers.

The board provides two options for WiFi/BT: an M.2 E-key slot and a header for USB-delivered wireless. There is a microSD slot, which is helpful if you choose a Jetson variant without eMMC.

Other interfaces include 2x I2C, 2x GPIO, and 3x fan plus CAN, SPI, UART, LED, and system and power control. The board has 13-19VDC input @ 8A with included 90W adapter and a -25 to 80°C operating range.

Leetop-Flame-NX (left) and AGX Xavier based Flame Xavier

Leetop (but not Seeed) offers a Leetop-Flame-NX AI-at-the-edge Computing Platform that appears to be based on the A205 board. The 209 x 130 x 68.3 system has a single 2.5-inch SATA bay instead of 5x SATA interfaces and provides PCIe Gen 3 x1 and x4 interfaces instead of M.2. A serial port is optional. Leetop offers other similar Flame systems such as the AGX Xavier based Flame Xavier shown above at right (see farther below).

A203

The A203 is primarily designed for AI robot, drone, and UAV applications in manufacturing, logistics, retail, and agriculture, and also supports smart edge AI devices. The 87 x 52 x 26mm, 57-gram board is ready to deploy with the 69.6 x 45mm Jetson Nano or Xavier NX modules.

A203 detail views (Seeed version)
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The A203 provides GbE, HDMI 2.0, 2x USB 3.0, and micro-USB 2.0 OTG ports. There is also a microSD slot, an M.2 M-key for storage or cellular, and an M.2 E-key 2242 slot for WiFi/BT. You also get 40-pin GPIO, a CAN interface, and a single CSI interface (lanes unspecified). The board has a DC jack, a 3V Lithium battery, a jumper switch, and an 8-pin multifunction port.


Seeed version of A203 (left) and detail view of Leetop’s own A203 variant
(click images to enlarge)

A slightly different version of the A203 is posted on the Leetop website. This A203 variant flips the M.2 E-key and M-key locations and appears to add a second CSI interface. There is also a UCORE-A203 embedded system, which appears to be based on the A203 board, but has an RS232 port instead of CAN.

Other Leetop products

Leetop manufactures other boards and systems that do not appear to be available on Seeed. There is a Flame Xavier system (pictured farther above alongside the Flame-NX), which is powered by a Jetson AGX Xavier module. The system shares the same design and many of the features of the Flame-NX (or probably vice versa). Reflecting the greater power of the AGX Xavier, the Flame Xavier supplies more PCIe and MIPI-CSI interfaces, among other minor differences. There is also a Flame TX2NX system, which runs on the Jetson TX2 NX.

Leetop A200 with Jetson Nano (left)) and A300 with TX2
(click images to enlarge)

Leetop offers a Leetop-A200 carrier board with the Jetson Nano that sells for 5999 CNY (927.70) on TaoBao. Features include 2x USB 3.0, micro-USB OTG, GbE, and HDMI ports.

The A200 carrier is further equipped with dual CSI connectors, audio I/O, internal USB and GPIO interfaces. And a mini-PCIe slot with mSATA support and a SIM card slot. A UCORE-A200 system based on the board is also available.

A A300 carrier supports the older Jetson TX1 and TX2. Features include GbE, 2x HDMI, 2x USB 3.0, 2x CAN, and micro-USB OTG.

Leetop’s A206WEB kit appears to be a repackaging of the Nvidia Xavier NX dev kit rather than a kit based on its own A206 board covered at top. As noted, Leetop also sells the official Xavier NX kit. Other systems include an older, Jetson TX1 based B100 board and a TX2 based Deep Learning system.

Further information

Leetop’s A205 ($349) and A203 ($199) are available on Seeed. Other prices are listed above when available. More information may be found on the and Seeed A205 shopping page and the Seeed A203 shopping page. There is also a Leetop product page for its own slightly different version of the A203.