Seeed Studio’s reCamera Is a Modular Edge AI Sensible Digital camera Powered by Sophgo’s SG2002

Seeed Studio is making ready to launch what it claims is the “most superior AI digital camera” round, the reCamera — a modular RISC-V sensible digital camera platform able to operating laptop imaginative and prescient and synthetic intelligence (CV and AI) fashions on machine utilizing an built-in one tera-operations per second (TOPS) accelerator.

“reCamera is a mixture of a processor and a digital camera sensor,” the corporate explains of its creation. “As we speak, as processors (each SOC [System-on-Chip] and MCU [Microcontroller Unit]) have gotten smaller and extra highly effective, it’s now doable to mix the processor with digital camera sensors. In reality, many IPCs (IP Cameras) are already utilizing this design to speed up AI detection on edge units. So at the moment, we introduce reCamera, an open-source digital camera platform for everybody to play with.”

Whereas there are a selection of different sensible digital camera methods in the marketplace, Seeed is hoping to make the reCamera stand out due to a compact footprint and modular design — break up into three boards: the Core Board, the Sensor Board, and the Base board. The Core Board hosts the processor, native storage, and elective Wi-Fi connectivity; the Sensor Board homes a selection of picture sensors, with rolling- and global-shutter variants deliberate; and the Base Board gives USB Kind-C and UART serial connectivity, microSD Card storage, and — model-dependent — options reminiscent of an Ethernet port with Energy-over-Ethernet (PoE) compatibility or CAN bus connectivity.

Two variants of Core Board have been revealed, solely one in every of which can be obtainable at launch: the C1_2002w, which incorporates emmC storage and a Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Low Power (BLE) radio module; a C1_2002 will observe, which drops the Wi-Fi/BLE radio in favour of additional SDIO and UART connectivity. In each instances they’re powered by the Sophgo SG2002, a dual-core chip that gives the consumer’s selection of Arm Cortex-A53 or T-Head XuanTie C906 RISC-V core alongside an MCS-51 8051-compatible microcontroller core and a one TOPS neural coprocessor for on-device machine studying and synthetic intelligence (ML and AI) duties.

The Core Board stacks with the Sensor Board, of which just one is predicted to be obtainable at launch: the S1_OV5647, primarily based on an Omnivision 5 megapixel rolling-shutter picture sensor. Two others have been confirmed as works-in-progress: the S2_IMX335, which makes use of a Sony IMX335 rolling-shutter picture sensor; and the S3_SC130GS, primarily based on a SmartSens one-megapixel international shutter that trades decision for capturing the complete picture in as soon as shot.

The usual Base Board, in the meantime, features a microSD Card slot, an Ethernet single-port transformer module, a UART serial bus, and USB Kind-C connector for information and energy. A “B2” variant swaps from a side-mount to a vertical-mount USB Kind-C port, whereas the “B3_POE” drops the USB connector and microSD Card slot for an Ethernet port with PoE help. The ultimate mannequin, the “B4_Gyro,” comes an on-board gyroscope sensor and a connector for CAN bus connectivity — although all fashions bar the “B1” default had been, on the time of writing, at model 0.1 and will not be anticipated to be obtainable at launch.

In all instances, the boards are managed utilizing a Linux buildroot system dubbed reCamera OS, which gives an internet interface for community configuration, reside view, and a browser-based system for opening a shell on the digital camera for command-line management. The accelerator is offered in frameworks together with TensorFlow and PyTorc, Seeed has confirmed, Seed has additionally confirmed three associated tasks: the reCamera Gimbal, which is an open-source motorized gimbal mount and housing for the digital camera; the reCamera Industrial, which gives a rugged housing with tripod mount and interchangeable lens help; and the reCamera Robotic Arm which, because the title implies, mates the digital camera with a robotic arm.

Seed is launching the reCamera at $34.90 for a non-WiFi/BLE model with 8GB eMMC rising to $54.90 for a Wi-Fi/BLE model with 64GB eMMC, and has begun promoting low cost coupons which is able to shave 50% off the price of the top-end mannequin for $5 on the corporate retailer for a restricted variety of early-bird patrons.

Extra info is offered within the venture’s GitHub repository, the place some design recordsdata have been launched beneath the permissive Apache 2.0 license; the reCamera OS is offered in a separate repository. These taken with receiving a pattern previous to the official launch, in the meantime, can apply to develop into an alpha tester.