ROSpider + Jetson Orin Nano — cable & connector guide (things the written manual leaves out)

Development Discussion Jetson & Raspberry Pi Series
1

Sharing this after assembling a ROSpider with the Jetson Orin Nano Super, because the written manual (section 1.2) mostly just links the assembly videos and doesn’t spell out which cable goes where — and a couple of connectors aren’t documented at all. Hope it saves the next person some time.

  1. The STM32 board has TWO USB-C ports — they are NOT interchangeable

    • Upper, silkscreen 5V5A OUT (PWR1): 5V power output, for a Jetson Nano / Raspberry Pi 5 only.
      • Lower, silkscreen UART (PWR2): the serial data link.
    • On the Orin Nano the data cable (USB-C to USB-A) runs from the UART port to any Jetson USB port. It enumerates as /dev/ttyACM0 (symlinked /dev/rrc). If the data cable is plugged into 5V5A OUT instead, ros_robot_controller cannot open /dev/rrc and the node dies on boot.

    1. Power path is different on Orin vs Nano/Pi

      • Orin Nano / Orin NX: powered from the STM32 board’s 3-pin JST (the Orin power port) to the Jetson barrel jack. NOT from the USB-C 5V5A OUT.
        • Jetson Nano / Pi 5: those use the USB-C-to-barrel cable from 5V5A OUT.
      • (Support has noted elsewhere on this forum that the Jetson Nano power wiring should not be reused on the Orin — this is why.)

      1. The HDMI “virtual display” dummy plug is mandatory on Orin Nano/NX

      2. Without it the NoMachine remote desktop comes up blank / wrong resolution. SSH still works without it, so it is easy to miss.

      1. Three cables people mix up

    5. | Cable | Connector | Plugs into |
    6. | — | — | — |
    7. | STM32 data | USB-C to USB-A | STM32 UART port to Jetson USB |
    8. | Depth camera (Aurora930) | wide wafer to USB-A | camera to Jetson USB |
  4. | LiDAR (LD19) | small white 4-pin ZH1.5T-4P | expansion-board LiDAR port (NOT USB) |
  5. The camera cable ends in a USB-A plug. The LiDAR cable is the small 4-pin one — thinner, and one pin more than the 3-pin bus-servo cables — which is exactly why it is easy to mistake for “the camera data cable.”

  6. Where the LiDAR actually connects (this is undocumented)

  7. On the Hiwonder JetsonAdapter expansion board (the tall board on the 40-pin header, with KEY1 / KEY2 buttons at the bottom): the LiDAR goes to the small 4-pin white connector at the top corner, silkscreen TX / GND / 5V.

It is NOT the row of larger white connectors along the outer edge — those are reserved GPIO / I2C breakouts and stay empty in the stock build. The two CAM0 / CAM1 ribbon connectors on the Jetson carrier are MIPI-CSI camera ports and are also unused on the Orin build (it uses the USB depth camera).

  1. Quick “is it wired right?” checks over SSH

    • STM32: ls -l /dev/rrc exists, and lsusb | grep 1a86 shows 1a86:55d4
      • LiDAR: ls -l /dev/lidar (to ttyTHS1), and ros2 topic hz /scan streams ~10 Hz
        • Camera: /dev/video* present
      • It would be great if the written manual could add the LiDAR connector location and the UART vs 5V5A OUT distinction — those two were the biggest time-sinks during assembly.