Can I use the ZED Box without an HDMI display?

Yes. However, when you use a ZED Box (or any NVIDIA® Jetson™ device) with a ZED camera, the ZED SDK requires the GPU and NVIDIA® CUDA, even if the graphical environment is not used.

If no display is connected and the graphical interface has not been started, the operating system may not make the GPU available, and the ZED SDK initialization fails, for example when you connect to the ZED Box remotely with ssh -X.

Solution

Force the operating system to start the graphics manager, so that the GPU and CUDA are available. There are two possible ways to achieve this.

Hardware solution (recommended)

Insert an HDMI display emulator into the HDMI port: it simulates the connection of a display and forces the graphics engine to start. This solution is simple and minimally invasive.

You can find a "headless display emulator" (also called "HDMI dummy plug") in all the most common online stores; we suggest an emulator that supports 4K resolution.

Software solution

Note: this solution does not work in all conditions and with all JetPack versions. We recommend the hardware solution.

The software solution forces the start of the X server by modifying the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

Open a terminal and edit the file with your favorite text editor, for example:

sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Find the Section "Device" line and, before the next EndSection line, add:

Option "AllowEmptyInitialConfiguration" "true"

Save the file and reboot to apply the change.

For more information, see Virtual display and headless mode in the ZED SDK documentation, and Can I run ZED applications over ssh -X?