Gemma 4 VLA Demo on Jetson Orin Nano Super

Talk to Gemma 4, and she'll decide on her own if she needs to look through the webcam to answer you. All running locally on a Jetson Orin Nano Super.

You speak → Parakeet STT → Gemma 4 → [Webcam if needed] → Kokoro TTS → Speaker

Press SPACE to record, SPACE again to stop. This is a simple VLA: the model decides on its own whether to act based on the context of what you asked, no keyword triggers, no hardcoded logic. If your question needs Gemma to open her eyes, she'll decide to take a photo, interpret it, and answer you with that context in mind. She's not describing the picture, she's answering your actual question using what she saw.

And honestly? It's pretty impressive that this runs on a Jetson Orin Nano. :)

Get the code

The full script for this tutorial lives on GitHub, in my Google_Gemma repo next to the Gemma 2 demos:

👉 github.com/asierarranz/Google_Gemma

Grab it with either of these (pick one):

# Option 1: clone the whole repo
git clone https://github.com/asierarranz/Google_Gemma.git
cd Google_Gemma/Gemma4

# Option 2: just download the script
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/asierarranz/Google_Gemma/main/Gemma4/Gemma4_vla.py

That single file (Gemma4_vla.py) is all you need. It pulls the STT/TTS models and voice assets from Hugging Face on first run.

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Hardware

What we used:

• NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano Super (8 GB)
• Logitech C920 webcam (mic built in)
• USB speaker
• USB keyboard (to press SPACE)

Not tied to these exact devices, any webcam, USB mic, and USB speaker that Linux sees should work.

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Step 1: System packages

Fresh Jetson, let's install the basics:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y \
  git build-essential cmake curl wget pkg-config \
  python3-pip python3-venv python3-dev \
  alsa-utils pulseaudio-utils v4l-utils psmisc \
  ffmpeg libsndfile1

build-essential and cmake are only needed if you go the native llama.cpp route (Option A in Step 4). The rest is for audio, webcam, and Python.

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Step 2: Python environment

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install --upgrade pip
pip install opencv-python-headless onnx_asr kokoro-onnx soundfile huggingface-hub numpy

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Step 3: Free up RAM (optional but recommended)

Heads up: this step may not be strictly necessary. But we're pushing this 8 GB board pretty hard with a fairly capable model, so giving ourselves some headroom makes the whole experience smoother, especially if you've been playing with Docker or other heavy stuff before this.

These are just the commands that worked nicely for me. Use them if they help.

Add some swap

Swap won't speed up inference, but it acts as a safety net during model loading so you don't get OOM-killed at the worst moment.

sudo fallocate -l 8G /swapfile
sudo chmod 600 /swapfile
sudo mkswap /swapfile
sudo swapon /swapfile
echo '/swapfile none swap sw 0 0' | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab

Kill memory hogs

sudo systemctl stop docker 2>/dev/null || true
sudo systemctl stop containerd 2>/dev/null || true
pkill -f tracker-miner-fs-3 || true
pkill -f gnome-software || true
free -h

Close browser tabs, IDE windows, anything you don't need. Every MB counts.

If you're going with the Docker route in Step 4, obviously don't stop Docker here, you'll need it. Still kill the rest though.

Still tight on RAM?

From our tests, Q4_K_M (native build) and Q4_K_S (Docker) run comfortably on the 8 GB board once you've done the cleanup above. But if you've got other stuff you can't kill and memory is still tight, you can drop one step down to a Q3 quant, same model, a bit less smart, noticeably lighter. Just swap the filename in Step 4:

gemma-4-E2B-it-Q3_K_M.gguf   # instead of Q4_K_M

Honestly though, stick with Q4_K_M if you can. It's the sweet spot.

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Step 4: Serve Gemma 4

You need a running llama-server with Gemma 4 before launching the demo. We'll build llama.cpp natively on the Jetson, it gives the best performance and full control over the vision projector that the VLA demo needs.

Build llama.cpp

cd ~
git clone https://github.com/ggml-org/llama.cpp.git
cd llama.cpp
cmake -B build \
  -DGGML_CUDA=ON \
  -DCMAKE_CUDA_ARCHITECTURES="87" \
  -DGGML_NATIVE=ON \
  -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build --config Release -j4

Download the model and vision projector

mkdir -p ~/models && cd ~/models

wget -O gemma-4-E2B-it-Q4_K_M.gguf \
  https://huggingface.co/unsloth/gemma-4-E2B-it-GGUF/resolve/main/gemma-4-E2B-it-Q4_K_M.gguf

wget -O mmproj-gemma4-e2b-f16.gguf \
  https://huggingface.co/ggml-org/gemma-4-E2B-it-GGUF/resolve/main/mmproj-gemma4-e2b-f16.gguf

The mmproj file is the vision projector. Without it Gemma can't see, so don't skip it.

Start the server

~/llama.cpp/build/bin/llama-server \
  -m ~/models/gemma-4-E2B-it-Q4_K_M.gguf \
  --mmproj ~/models/mmproj-gemma4-e2b-f16.gguf \
  -c 2048 \
  --image-min-tokens 70 --image-max-tokens 70 \
  --ubatch-size 512 --batch-size 512 \
  --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8080 \
  -ngl 99 --flash-attn on \
  --no-mmproj-offload --jinja -np 1

One flag worth mentioning: -ngl 99 tells llama-server to push all the model's layers onto the GPU (99 is just "as many as the model has"). If you ever run into memory issues, you can lower that number to offload fewer layers to GPU and the rest to CPU. For this setup though, all layers on GPU should work fine.

Verify it's up

From another terminal:

curl -s http://localhost:8080/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"model":"gemma4","messages":[{"role":"user","content":"Hi!"}],"max_tokens":32}' \
  | python3 -m json.tool

If you get JSON back, you're good.

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Step 5: Find your mic, speaker, and webcam

Microphone

arecord -l

Look for your USB mic. In our case the C920 showed up as plughw:3,0.

Speaker

pactl list short sinks

This lists your PulseAudio sinks. Pick the one that matches your speaker, it'll be a long ugly name like alsa_output.usb-.... In my case it was alsa_output.usb-Generic_USB2.0_Device_20130100ph0-00.analog-stereo, but yours will be different.

Webcam

v4l2-ctl --list-devices

Usually index 0 (i.e. /dev/video0).

Quick test

export MIC_DEVICE="plughw:3,0"
export SPK_DEVICE="alsa_output.usb-Generic_USB2.0_Device_20130100ph0-00.analog-stereo"

arecord -D "$MIC_DEVICE" -f S16_LE -r 16000 -c 1 -d 3 /tmp/test.wav
paplay --device="$SPK_DEVICE" /tmp/test.wav

If you hear yourself, you're set.

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Step 6: Run the demo

Make sure the server from Step 4 is running, then:

source .venv/bin/activate

export MIC_DEVICE="plughw:3,0"
export SPK_DEVICE="alsa_output.usb-Generic_USB2.0_Device_20130100ph0-00.analog-stereo"
export WEBCAM=0
export VOICE="af_jessica"

python3 Gemma4_vla.py

On first launch, the script downloads Parakeet STT, Kokoro TTS, and generates voice prompt WAVs. Takes a minute, then you're live.

• SPACE → start recording
• speak your question
• SPACE → stop recording

There's also a text-only mode if you want to skip audio setup and test the LLM path directly:

python3 Gemma4_vla.py --text

Changing the voice

Kokoro ships with many voices. Switch with:

export VOICE="am_puck"
python3 Gemma4_vla.py

Some good ones: af_jessica, af_nova, am_puck, bf_emma, am_onyx.

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How it works

The script exposes exactly one tool to Gemma 4:

{
  "name": "look_and_answer",
  "description": "Take a photo with the webcam and analyze what is visible."
}

When you ask a question:

1. Your speech is transcribed locally (Parakeet STT)
2. Gemma gets the text plus the tool definition
3. If the question needs vision, she calls look_and_answer, the script grabs a webcam frame and sends it back
4. Gemma answers, and Kokoro speaks it out loud

There's no keyword matching. The model decides when it needs to see. That's the VLA part.

The --jinja flag on llama-server is what enables this, it activates Gemma's native tool-calling support.

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Troubleshooting

Server runs out of memory, do the cleanup from Step 3 again. Close everything. This model fits on 8 GB, but you have to be tidy.

No sound, check pactl list short sinks and make sure SPK_DEVICE matches a real sink.

Mic records silence, double-check with arecord -l, then test recording manually.

First run is slow, normal. It's downloading models and generating voice prompts. Second run is fast.

---

Environment variables

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Bonus: just want to try Gemma 4 in text mode?

If you don't care about the full VLA demo and just want to poke at Gemma 4 on your Jetson without building anything, there's a ready-to-go Docker image from Jetson AI Lab with llama.cpp pre-compiled for Orin:

sudo docker run -it --rm --pull always \
  --runtime=nvidia --network host \
  -v $HOME/.cache/huggingface:/root/.cache/huggingface \
  ghcr.io/nvidia-ai-iot/llama_cpp:latest-jetson-orin \
  llama-server -hf unsloth/gemma-4-E2B-it-GGUF:Q4_K_S

One line, no compilation, and -hf pulls the GGUF from Hugging Face on first run. Hit http://localhost:8080 with any OpenAI-compatible client and chat away.

Heads up: this Docker path is text-only. It doesn't load the vision projector, so it won't work with the VLA demo above. For the full webcam experience, stick with the native build in Step 4.

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Hope you enjoyed this tutorial! If you have any questions or ideas, feel free to reach out. :)

Asier Arranz | NVIDIA

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