Featured September 13 - 17

Connect Tech & NVIDIA

Written by
Kathleen Conroy
Published on
September 17, 2021 at 12:00:47 PM PDT September 17, 2021 at 12:00:47 PM PDTth, September 17, 2021 at 12:00:47 PM PDT


We are sending our road warriors, Donnie Springfield and Bob Buchanan, off to San Jose next week to exhibit Connect Tech products at Sensors Converge! The show is at the McEnery Convention Center on September 22 and 23. You will find them in Booth 1011. 


To prepare ourselves for the show, and hopefully whip all of social media into a frenzy over it, we took a deep dive into Connect Tech’s NVIDIA® Jetson carriers and systems for our Products-of-the-Day. 


NVIDIA invented the GPU in 1999 and it revolutionized PC Gaming. But GPUs are so powerful that it became clear they could be used as the brains of computers, automated vehicles, and robots to actually perceive the world around them, understand what they were sensing, make decisions based on that information, and even solve problems and act in response. The NVIDIA Jetson modules are designed for AI, and they pack incredible computing performance into tiny, light-weight, and power efficient packages.


Connect Tech had been manufacturing small rugged solutions for the embedded and industrial markets for about 30 years. When NVIDIA brought out the earliest Jetson modules, Connect Tech recognized that what people needed was a truly deployable carrier board - NOT just another clunky development board. In early 2016 they brought out their first carrier board, the Astro, and soon they were manufacturing a variety of carriers that offered different sizes, weights, features, and price points. 


A carrier board and a Jetson module still presented too much engineering time and effort for some customers, so Connect Tech began manufacturing complete plug-and-play Jetson systems. And as NVIDIA has brought out increasingly powerful Jetson modules, Connect Tech kept up with increasingly feature rich carriers and systems! Connect Tech also offers both semi-custom and custom design services. 


I chose to start the week with the best-selling Orbitty carrier because it has remained so popular even as faster and stronger NVIDIA modules have come out. Those older TX2 and TX2i’s are still crazy powerful and promise long lifecycles. https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/community/lifecycle Connect Tech even brought out an update to the Orbitty called the Quasar that provides more connectivity in the same footprint. We sell a lot of Quasars, but the Orbitty is still the star of the show.


The Connect Tech Orbitty carrier for NVIDIA® Jetson™ TX2 and TX2i. It's designed to exactly match the NVIDIA Jetson module form factor, and provides convenient PC type connectors for USB, HDMI, GbE, microSD, 3.3V UART, I2C, and GPIO. Ideal for robotics!





We switched gears to cover Connect Tech’s NVIDIA Jetson embedded systems for the rest of the week. This was a controversial decision, with Bob and Donnie being equally split on whether Sensors Converge attendees would be more interested in carrier boards or systems. I chose to focus on systems because some of these had never had a chance to be a Product-of-the-Day, and it was their time to shine!


All the Connect Tech NVIDIA Jetson systems can be modified to incorporate additional storage, WiFi/Bluetooth, and other features depending on the system. Connect Tech will even customize the paint colors and logo for you.


The Cogswell Vision System from Connect Tech is powered by NVIDIA® Jetson™ TX2 supercomputer-on-module providing 256 CUDA cores on the NVIDIA Pascal architecture. Connect 5 Gigabit Ethernet cameras, 4 powered by onboard POE. This is a fanless and cableless system.







The Rudi-NX from Connect Tech is powered by NVIDIA® Jetson Xavier™ NX. Computer vision, speech recognition, robotics, and machine learning are all easy peasy with this supercomputing powerhouse ~ 21 TOPS of performance in 15W!😎



The very day the Rudi-NX was our Product-of-the-Day, I spotted this awesome post on Twitter! How could I miss an article that was named “DON’T SLEEP ON THE LAWN, THERE’S AN AI-POWERED, FLAMETHROWER-WIELDING ROBOT ABOUT”? I was tickled pink to read that a Rudi-NX was the brains of that beast!


Aerospace, Defense, Rugged Environments: Connect Tech’s Sentry-X brings you the awesome performance of the NVIDIA® Jetson AGX Xavier™ in a rugged enclosure! With a unique docking station that allows for the quick release of the Sentry-X! Very 007!🕵️‍♂️


Smart cities, autonomous vehicles,and robots are all easy applications for the Rudi-AGX from Connect Tech. It is an out-of-the-box solution for handling all your sensors and running your AI program at Maximum Performance while maintaining a safe operating temperature. Powered by NVIDIA® Jetson AGX Xavier™



We have a Sensors Converge page on our website with all the Connect Tech NVIDIA Jetson products and a QR code for the booth. I’m resisting printing brochures ~ too much paper ends up in the trash! Stop by the booth and PLEASE scan that QR code to help me prove that a webpage is as effective!

That was the week! Next week we’ll be sending out updates from the floor of Sensors Converge! We’ll probably look at some more Connect Tech products as well. Make sure to keep an eye on our home page or our social media!