Jetson Nano. Error installing Edge Impulse Linux Python SDK

angelo.cioffari.btc · April 27, 2025, 12:58pm

Question/Issue:
I am trying to install the Edge Impulse Linux Python SDK on a Jetson Nano following this documentation
Linux Python SDK - Edge Impulse Documentation
But I have a problem when I try to install edge_impulse_linux.
Does anyone know the problem? Is there any way to solve it?
Thanks in Advance.

Project ID:
649146

Context/Use case:
I would like to learn more about Edge Impulse and I started with this sample project. Counting for Inspection and Quality Control - Nvidia Jetson Nano (TensorRT)

Steps Taken:
On this step of the Linux Python SDK - Edge Impulse Documentation

pip3 install pyaudio edge_impulse_linux

Actual Outcome:
I get this error:

File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/pkg_resources/__init__.py", line 2944, in __init__
raise RequirementParseError(str(e))
pkg_resources.RequirementParseError: Invalid requirement, parse error at "': requir'"

----------------------------------------
Command "python setup.py egg_info" failed with error code 1 in /tmp/pip-build-1vx7oee2/edge-impulse-linux/

Reproducibility:

[X] Always
[ ] Sometimes
[ ] Rarely

Environment:

Platform: NVIDIA Jetson Nano Developer Kit rev B01
Build Environment Details: JetPack 4.6.1
OS Version: Jetson Linux R32.7.1 / NVIDIA L4T 32.7.1 / Ubuntu 18.04

Eoin · May 28, 2025, 9:52am

Hi @angelo.cioffari.btc

You are missing some key dependencies here again namely the setuptools wheel, what guide are you following? please check our docs for the correct steps Edge Impulse Documentation

This looks like the step you missed but please follow the guide above

sudo apt update
sudo apt install python3-pip -y
pip3 install --upgrade pip setuptools wheel

Best

Eoin

fyi @rjames

angelo.cioffari.btc · August 23, 2025, 10:30am

Hello again @Eoin! Thank you for your reply.

I followed your steps

sudo apt update
sudo apt install python3-pip -y
pip3 install --upgrade pip setuptools wheel

got this message:

Successfully installed pip-21.3.1 setuptools-59.6.0 wheel-0.37.1

Then I follow the 2 documentations: this NVIDIA Jetson and this one Linux Python SDK(the Jetson Nano steps)

sudo apt-get install libatlas-base-dev libportaudio2 libportaudiocpp0 portaudio19-dev python3-pip
pip3 install Cython
pip3 install pyaudio edge_impulse_linux

got this message:

Successfully built pyaudio edge-impulse-linux
Installing collected packages: psutil, numpy, pyaudio, edge-impulse-linux
WARNING: The scripts f2py, f2py3 and f2py3.6 are installed in ‘/home/jetsonnano/.local/bin’ which is not on PATH.
Consider adding this directory to PATH or, if you prefer to suppress this warning, use --no-warn-script-location.
ERROR: pip’s dependency resolver does not currently take into account all the packages that are installed. This behaviour is the source of the following dependency conflicts.
uff 0.6.9 requires protobuf>=3.3.0, but you have protobuf 3.0.0 which is incompatible.
Successfully installed edge-impulse-linux-1.0.10 numpy-1.19.5 psutil-7.0.0 pyaudio-0.2.14

seems to work. (need to investigate what this WARNING is)

what I see too, is I got a lot a red warnings on the top, when the command
pip3 install pyaudio edge_impulse_linux
was runnig. something like this (I copy here a short part, is all too long…)

WARNING: pip is being invoked by an old script wrapper. This will fail in a future version of pip.
Please see github/pypa/pip/issues/5599 for advice on fixing the underlying issue.
To avoid this problem you can invoke Python with ‘-m pip’ instead of running pip directly.
Defaulting to user installation because normal site-packages is not writeable
Collecting pyaudio
Downloading PyAudio-0.2.14.tar.gz (47 kB)
|████████████████████████████████| 47 kB 1.1 MB/s
Installing build dependencies … done
Getting requirements to build wheel … done
Preparing metadata (pyproject.toml) … done
Collecting edge_impulse_linux
Downloading edge_impulse_linux-1.0.12.tar.gz (11 kB)
Installing build dependencies … done
Getting requirements to build wheel … error
ERROR: Command errored out with exit status 1:
command: /usr/bin/python3 /home/jetsonnano/.local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/pip/_vendor/pep517/in_process/_in_process.py get_requires_for_build_wheel /tmp/tmp9h5no544
cwd: /tmp/pip-install-ntn16zl8/edge-impulse-linux_d803705e390a4e3793ef4224961a1b68
Complete output (51 lines):
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/tmp/pip-build-env-wj3djl6y/overlay/lib/python3.6/site-packages/pkg_resources/_vendor/packaging/requirements.py”, line 102, in init
req = REQUIREMENT.parseString(requirement_string)
File “/tmp/pip-build-env-wj3djl6y/overlay/lib/python3.6/site-packages/pkg_resources/_vendor/pyparsing.py”, line 1654, in parseString
raise exc
File “/tmp/pip-build-env-wj3djl6y/overlay/lib/python3.6/site-packages/pkg_resources/_vendor/pyparsing.py”, line 1644, in parseString
loc, tokens = self._parse( instring, 0 )
File “/tmp/pip-build-env-wj3djl6y/overlay/lib/python3.6/site-packages/pkg_resources/_vendor/pyparsing.py”, line 1402, in _parseNoCache
loc,tokens = self.parseImpl( instring, preloc, doActions )
File “/tmp/pip-build-env-wj3djl6y/overlay/lib/python3.6/site-packages/pkg_resources/_vendor/pyparsing.py”, line 3417, in parseImpl
loc, exprtokens = e._parse( instring, loc, doActions )
File “/tmp/pip-build-env-wj3djl6y/overlay/lib/python3.6/site-packages/pkg_resources/_vendor/pyparsing.py”, line 1406, in _parseNoCache
loc,tokens = self.parseImpl( instring, preloc, doActions )
File “/tmp/pip-build-env-wj3djl6y/overlay/lib/python3.6/site-packages/pkg_resources/_vendor/pyparsing.py”, line 3205, in parseImpl
raise ParseException(instring, loc, self.errmsg, self)
pkg_resources._vendor.pyparsing.ParseException: Expected stringEnd (at char 4), (line:1, col:5)

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

etc, etc… do you think I should ignore these warnings?

Thanks and Regards,
Angelo

Eoin · August 26, 2025, 3:33pm

Hi @angelo.cioffari.btc

I’m pretty sure this is because you are on Jetpack 4.6.1 our Jetpack docs recommend 4.6.4 and there is up to 6.0 now. NVIDIA can be pretty difficult to manage dependencies on particularly on older versions.

ERROR: Command errored out with exit status 1:
command: /usr/bin/python3 /home/jetsonnano/.local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/pip/_vendor/pep517/in_process/_in_process.py get_requires_for_build_wheel /tmp/tmp9h5no544
cwd: /tmp/pip-install-ntn16zl8/edge-impulse-linux_d803705e390a4e3793ef4224961a1b68
Complete output (51 lines):

Can you try:

python3 -m pip install --user --upgrade pip setuptools wheel

Can you try to update to the latest available Ubuntu and Jetpack for your Nano @angelo.cioffari.btc ?

Best

Eoin

angelo.cioffari.btc · September 7, 2025, 6:14pm

Hi @Eoin,

Hmmm, Ok, you have a point here… I am trying to see how to update to JetPack SDK 4.6.4. Is not really easy, need some host machine with Ubuntu 18.04 for the NVIDIA SDK Manager 2.3.0

Probably will try with a virtual machine…

ah! btw. the webinar Anomaly Detection Anywhere / Edge AI Diagnostics Meets Satellite IoT last thursday was very cool!

Thanks and Regards,
Angelo

Eoin · April 2, 2026, 11:32am

Thanks @angelo.cioffari.btc missed your feedback appreciate that comment!

I’m a big automotive nerd as well, so I was especially happy to see that webinar land

For the Jetson Nano, our docs recommend JetPack 4.6.4. From your earlier post, you’re on:

So you’re slightly below the documented version, and that could definitely explain the Python packaging and dependency issues you were seeing.

For Nano, the recommended setup flow is:

wget -q -O - https://cdn.edgeimpulse.com/firmware/linux/jetson.sh | bash
edge-impulse-linux

Jetson Nano should use JetPack 4.6.4
Orin devices use different setup scripts and supported JetPack versions, so make sure you’re following the Nano path rather than the Orin one
if you keep hitting Python packaging issues, it’s better to use:

python3 -m pip install --user --upgrade pip setuptools wheel

instead of older pip wrappers

if GPU runtime issues show up later, they’re often caused by mismatched JetPack / TensorRT / shared library versions

So at this point, I’d recommend updating the Nano to JetPack 4.6.4 first, then rerunning the Jetson setup script from the docs. That’s the cleanest way to get back onto a supported baseline.

Best
Eoin

Eoin · April 2, 2026, 11:35am

You can also try installing WSL on Windows to get an Ubuntu instance. That may be a convenient option if you do not have a separate Linux machine available and are on Windows:

wsl --install -d Ubuntu

That said, NVIDIA flashing and SDK Manager can be quite version-sensitive, so a native Ubuntu install is still usually the most reliable path if WSL gives you trouble.

I’ve had a lot of success using WSL though for some local training tasks etc for my own testing.

Best

Eoin