Hello! I’m getting back into hobby robotics after being away for a long while, and I’m looking for something that will give me a nice “vertical slice” of different areas of modern robotics. I’ll be learning ROS2 using what I purchase, and I’d like to have a multi-year hobby project with some room to grow. As I build up experience with the robot, I want it to eventually become a full part of my home lab as a embodied home assistant. I’ve already got a Jetson Orin Nano 8GB I want to use as my controller, and I’m considering the possibility of upgrading to a Orin NX or the recently announced Orin Nano 2 at a later point.
I’ve narrowed my choices down to the RosOrin Pro and the JetRover with a tank base. The JetRover’s hardware sounds like a better fit for what I want, and the tank base appeals to me more than the Mecano-only JetRover. However, the JetRover’s an older product and I’m wondering what software updates will look like going forward. I’d like to be able to use my Orin Nano’s SUPER mode, and with the Orin Nano 2 recently announced I’m wondering if system images will be prepared once that’s out. Is it likely that the JetRover’s stock software will be updated to Jetpack 6 or newer?
The RosOrin Pro seems like the bleeding edge product, it can support SUPER mode stock, and I figure it’s very likely to get Orin Nano 2 support eventually, but I also think that if I learn enough to forego the stock software image I can close the software gap between the two. I want to start with the stock software while I go through the learning material and read ROS2 From Scratch, but eventually I think setting up my own environment could work for me. This is meant to be a long term hobby project, so the steep difficulty there may not be a bad thing.
I’m struggling to decide, since this is a big purchase. What do you all think?