I'm really annoyed that NVIDIA removed the hardware h264 encoder from the Jetson even though they market it as an edge AI device with two CSI ports for cameras. With a software codec, CPU load at 1080p@30fps reaches up to 40% and power consumption shoots up a lot.
After looking into the topic a bit, it feels like the Raspberry Pi 5 also lost the hardware encoder because of a chip shortage, but the rpi4 still has it. By the way, I have one and used it in the robot until I rebuilt it with a Jetson. At the same resolution and frame rate, the rpi4 pulls a bit over 5W and CPU load isn’t more than 5% handling the stream without any hiccups.
Now I’m starting to think maybe moving all the mechanics control and camera streaming from the Jetson to the rpi and merging them into a cluster isn’t such a bad idea. It seems like the extra 5W won’t matter but will free up all resources for Huang.
Now there's the question of how to connect them together since a NATS server needs to run somewhere. Ethernet + a mini switch or ethernet over usb?