device fails to connect to dashboard with recent Balena OS images

Product support
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1

My device is failing to come up on the dashboard when I use a newly-created USB flashing stick. I started seeing this issue March 18th 2025. I followed the same process as before and still saw the failure. I tried our old USB flashing sticks (created before March 18th) and the device showed up on the dashboard as expected. I also tried using an Ethernet cable with the same result.

To reproduce:

  1. In a fleet, click add device and set the appropriate settings (I used dev variant and WiFi).
  2. Once configured, download the Balena OS zip file from that page.
  3. Using Balena Etcher, flash that OS file to a USB stick.
  4. Once flashed, plug the USB stick into the powered-off Jetson.
  5. Turn on the Jetson.
  6. Device fails to show up on the dashboard within 30 minutes. (on successful flashes it appears in less than 3 minutes).

I’ve tried this process with flashing an old USB stick (known working) with a new OS file and the failure still occurs. I’ve also tried different fleets.

Since the failure occurs when changing only the Balena flashing device, it leads me believe its an issue on the dashboard side where I get the OS image file from.

Any support is appreciated.

2

Hello @kyleoptimotive thanks for your message

I have some questions:

  • Could you please share more details on what specific hardware are you trying to add?
  • what balenaOS version are you trying to flash?
  • and what instructions are you following for this?

With that we will be able to understand how to help you more! Thanks!

3

Thank you for the prompt response.

  1. The device we select on Balena cloud is Nvidia Jetson Orin NX 16GB in Xavier NX Devkit NVME. This device has been working for us. Our actual device is the Jetson Orin NX 16GB not the Jetson Xavier NX.
  2. We are trying to flash Balena OS version 6.4.0 according to the Add Device menu.
  3. I follow the steps provided in the Instructions pane of Add device (see screenshot).
    image
    image484Ă—934 75.2 KB

This process worked for us previously and still works when I use the old flashing USB drives (ones that haven’t been flashed with recent Balena OS images).

I’ll also add the output of uname -a here.
Linux db348cb 5.15.136-l4t-r36.3-1009.9 #1 SMP PREEMPT Fri May 3 10:21:41 UTC 2024 aarch64 aarch64 aarch64 GNU/Linux

Thanks.

4

Hello, since your firmware is greater than 36.3.0 the OS image you downloaded should flash the Jetson as you expect. Perhaps the Jetson is not booting from the USB drive? We have instructions here on how to manually select the USB drive with the OS image for booting: Nvidia Jetson Orin | balena
You’ll need to attach a monitor to the Jetson if one isn’t already, but it should provide more information about what is going on.

1 Like
5

It turns out that its the OS version that was the problem. I realized our working devices were using version 6.3.6 so I created a new flash stick using version 6.3.6 instead of the now-default 6.4.0 and it booted up no problem.

I’ll add that I tried to manually update the OS from the device’s dashboard page (from version 6.3.6 to version 6.4.0) however the status showed “Configuring (OS update failed)” and I had to reboot the device to get the status back to operational. The version stayed on 6.3.6.

For now I’m content to stick with using the older version but maybe this is something worth looking into?

Thank you,
Kyle

6

Hey @kyleoptimotive , can you clarify the following:

Our actual device is the Jetson Orin NX 16GB not the Jetson Xavier NX .

Does that mean you are using the jetson orin NX 16GB module but on a different/custom carrier board?

7

We are using an Nvidia Jetson Orin Nano Devkit as the carrier board for our Orin NX 16GB.