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ComputeNEORACER DOCS
NEORACER DOCS
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HARDWARE / COMPUTE

THE COMPUTE STACK.

One Linux host runs , your Python, the camera pipeline, and any neural net you want to deploy. A real-time microcontroller stack handles motor commands and so the high-level loop never blocks the wheels.

NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano0 TOPS AI acceleratorUbuntu + ROS 2 HumbleWi-Fi 6
01 / WHAT THE JETSON DOES

THE JETSON HOST.

  • Runs Ubuntu (the NeoRacer image ships pre-configured).
  • Hosts the ROS 2 graph, every node from FIG. A on the ROS 2 driver page lives here.
  • Drives the camera pipeline at 1080p / 120 fps.
  • Provides the AI accelerator for any TensorRT, ONNX, or PyTorch model you deploy.
  • Bridges Wi-Fi for SSH, ROS 2 topics, and OTA updates.
02 / WHAT THE MCU DOES

THE MICROCONTROLLER STACK.

The Jetson shines at perception and planning, but guaranteed real-time response is not its strength: a Python garbage-collection pause is longer than one control loop tick. That's where the microcontroller stack comes in. It speaks ROS 2 to the Jetson over USB and takes care of the time-critical loops the Jetson can't.

01

Motor control

PWM out to the ESC. Encoder counts in.
Closed-loop velocity control runs at a fixed kHz tick so you don't see torque ripple from a stalled Python loop.
02

Servo control

Steering angle commanded over PWM.
Trim and centre offsets are stored in flash so a re-flash of the Jetson doesn't lose your calibration.
03

IMU fusion

6-DOF samples at 100 Hz.
The MCU (microcontroller unit) does the bias subtraction so the Jetson sees clean orientation+angular-rate samples on /imu, no warm-up delay.
03 / WHO LIVES WHERE

THE WORK SPLIT.

Anything where timing has to be exact lives on the MCU, and everything else lives on the Jetson. In practice you'll spend about 99 % of your time writing code on the Jetson side. The MCU is usually something you configure rather than program.