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Comment by geerlingguy

2 days ago

These were nice early in the TensorFlow evolution, for things like Frigate...

But even CPU inference is both faster and more energy efficient with a modern Arm SBC chip, and things like the Hailo chip are way faster for similar price, if you have an M.2 slot.

I haven't seen a good USB port alternative for edge devices though.

The big problem is Google seems to have let the whole thing stagnate since like 2019. They could have some near little 5/10/20 TOPS NPUs for cheap if they had continued developing this hardware ecosystem :(

26 comments

geerlingguy

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Sabinus  2 days ago

>The big problem is Google seems to have let the whole thing stagnate since like 2019.

Google's flightiness strikes again. How they expect developers (and to some degree consumers) to invest in their churning product lines is beyond me. What's the point in buying a Google product when there's a good chance Google will drop software support and any further development in 5 years or less?

  • saidinesh5  2 days ago

    At my last day job, https://github.com/google-coral/libedgetpu/issues/26 this was the last nail in the coffin that got us to move away from coral hardware. This was when we were willing to look past even the poor availability of the hardware during the peak chip shortage.

    > As per https://www.tensorflow.org/guide/versions , Can we assume that libedgetpu released along with a tflite version is compatible with all the versions of tflite in the same major version?

    > Hi, we can't give any guarantee that libedgetpu released along with a tflite version is compatible with all the versions of tflite in the same major version.

  • bdhcuidbebe  2 days ago

    Yea, right! stares at my Nest smoke detectors

    • nevi-me  2 days ago

      For a device with a 10 year life, and enough connectivity to be future-proof, Google has handled them poorly.

      It's only a few weeks ago that they added support for them in the Home app.

      I believe they have a 802.15.4 radio, maybe the x chipset is too old, but it would have been great to get Matter over Thread support for them.

      New-comers like Aqara will instead take up that space.

Saris  19 hours ago

Even OpenVINO on an Intel iGPU is as fast with (I've heard) more accurate detection, and can be done on under 5W with a i3 mobile CPU or similar.

rahimnathwani  2 days ago 

  But even CPU inference is both faster and more energy efficient with a modern Arm SBC chip

Where I live, electricity costs 45 cents per kWh. What would be a good Arm SBC to run Frigate, assuming I have 4 cameras?

  • easygenes  2 days ago

    I’m not sure what’s the most optimal for cost/performance, but a Pi 5 8G + Hailo 8 looks like it will be a good option.

    * https://www.reddit.com/r/frigate_nvr/s/ncxP1YQDfB

    * https://github.com/blakeblackshear/frigate/blob/e773d63c16d9...

  • vladgur  2 days ago

    Frigate is surprisingly not that cpu intensive with if you have Coral.

    I got repurposed HP G2 SFF desktop with old i5-6500 cpu running proxmox with bunch of VMs and LXC containers including frigate.

    I am passing both coral USB through to frigate container for object detection and passing intel's gpu through for video decoding.

    With 10 cameras continuously recording, corals inference cpu usage is about 12%, frigate CPU usage is about 5%, although a service called go2rtc which is used by frigate to read the cameras streams and restream them to frigate takes up about 15% of the cpu.

    Overall my cpu usage fluctuates below 30% on that entire machine devoted to more than proxmox.

    I did run the watt calculation on that machine and it was something reasonable, dont recall it right now

  • m00x  11 hours ago

    Just get OAK cameras from luxonis.

    If you want home surveillance, you can just tie a bunch to ethernet and they'll do on-device AI.

  • SparkyMcUnicorn  1 day ago

    I'm running frigate on an SFF computer I got off eBay for $100 with an i7-8700. It averages around 14 watts. OpenVino for object detection and intel-qsv hardware acceleration preset.

  • pogue  2 days ago

    What are you trying to do, if you don't mind me asking?

    • rahimnathwani  2 days ago

      I'm looking to upgrade my home surveillance setup, currently running Arlo Pro 2 cameras. They work fine, but I'd prefer higher resolution and to avoid saturating my internet upstream with frequent video uploads.

      My needs are pretty much the same as people who buy camera bundles from big box stores. I want reliable motion detection for intruders, deliveries, and visitors, and the ability to watch videos recorded in the past couple of weeks.

ruph123  2 days ago

Looks like the Hailo m.2 accelerator costs $190 whereas I bought a coral accelerator for $55. So not exactly comparable.