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With the ever-increasing demand for smart homes and the Internet of Things, the demand for smart IoT gadgets has increased. In order to make IoT devices work as efficiently as possible, there are several supporting devices such as the Coral USB accelerator. Smart home users can use these devices to make them work faster and more efficiently.
The Coral USB Accelerator speed up the processing of a computer. The USB accelerator can do this through the use of modern TensorFlow technology to perform calculations at a much faster speed while consuming less energy. This means that your device will be able to process faster and more efficiently.
This article will explain how you can use the Coral USB accelerator to boost the speed and accuracy of smart home camera detection and its working.
Table of Contents
What is a Coral Usb Accelerator?
Coral Usb accelerator is a USB device that increases the processing speed of a processor. It is designed by google with the TPU(tensor processing unit) coprocessor. The device is used to process massive amounts of data at high speed. It can do 4 trillion operations per second and consumes just 2 watts of electricity.
What is TensorFlow?
Tensorflow is an open-source software library of Google for numerical computation on graphs and is used to process large amounts of data. It is used in computer vision, machine learning, and speech recognition. Tensors are mathematical objects that are used to represent data such as scalar and vector. A tensor is defined as a multidimensional array of numbers. They are used to represent the inputs and outputs of deep neural networks.
What are Neural Networks?
The neural network is a system of artificial intelligence that is inspired by the human brain. A neural network has three layers. Each layer consists of neurons, which are units that receive input from other neurons in the previous layer and produce output based on the input.
The first layer of neural networks receives inputs from the outside world. It then sends the input to the second layer of the network, which might be many layers deep(depending on strength of the AI system). The second layer then processes the input and sends the results to the third layer. The third layer makes decisions based on the results of the second layer(s).
Why do we need Coral USB Accelerator in Smart home?
In order for a Smart Home to be considered smart, it must have the ability to collect information about the environment and use that information to make the right and appropriate decision. This is a major component of what is known as Artificial Intelligence. One of the ways that artificial intelligence works is by using neural networks. These are very complex networks of neurons that have been trained to recognize different types of data sets and information.
Coral USB Accelerator makes machine learning easily possible
Google Coral USB accelerator helps you in the process of machine learning by making sure that you get the real essence of machine learning and AI, out of your detection devices such as security cameras, sound detectors, etc. The technology is quite advanced, and it is replacing heavy systems or processors that were previously needed to perform complex calculations in order to infer data in a useful way.
Coral USB Accelerator can detect various objects in the real world. It is a small, inexpensive, portable coprocessor that has a HIGH-speed processor for specific purpose applications. It can run data analysis of various inputs, such as recognizing images, detecting objects, and detecting sounds. With its small size and low cost, it can help you to make your smart home more intelligent in understanding objects.
Smart Home Applications of Coral USB Accelerator
- Coral USB Accelerator can help you to find out whether someone is wearing a mask.
- This device will let you know if there is any specific insect flying around in your house.
- You can use this to detect fire, or even detect smoke.
- You can use this to monitor your baby’s breathing patterns.
- You can even use it to detect sounds.
- You can detect people entering your house with their recognition.
- Save the Video recording over disk only when there is some presence of a pet, animal, or human being.
All you need is to buy this small tiny gadget and download a free application from Google Coral ai platform. All of the directions, procedures, examples, and models are free to download from the Google Coral AI website. The impact of AI on our daily lives is significant. Learn more about it in one of our articles.
Coral USB Accelerator with RasberryPi 4
RasberrryPi 4 is compatible with Coral USB accelerator using USB 3.0. Please check the Coral USB Accelerator Starter Guide for more information. To install the coral USB accelerator on your raspberry pi 4, you need to perform the following sequence of activities. Learn about these in detail before starting the USB Accelerator on RasberryPi4
- Installation of Google Coral’s Compatible Package
- Installation of Edge TPU Runtime Library
- Installation of Python API
- Setting Python Virtual Environments and Camera Capturing
- Loading and installation of Google pre-trained models and examples
- Test various models of face detection, object detection, and classification.
The above sequence summarises activities you need to work on to utilize USB accelerator functionality over RaspberryPi 4.
Importance of Edge TPU Library
The Edge TPU Runtime Library allows you to accelerate your model training with TensorFlow using the Edge TPU chips. Edge TPU speeds machine learning applications 30 times faster by offering hardware support for deep neural networks without needing the internet.
AI-enabled NVR system using Coral USB accelerator
Coral USB accelerator can create a perfect AI-enabled NVR (Network Video Recording) system that uses artificial intelligence models to manage recordings and automate tasks, making it easier for users to keep their systems up and running. With the help of the Coral USB accelerator, you can provide a new level of intelligence to the NVR system.
An alternative to AI-enabled NVR is Frigate for Home Assitant. It is also an open-source NVR and OpenCV(Open source Computer Vision) with the functionality of AI processing technology. Frigate can record audio, video, and images. And also supports facial recognition, object recognition, and object tracking. In terms of speed performance, however, Google Coral beats any other Machine learning inference system.
Where can I buy a USB Accelerator?
Coral USB accelerators are not often seen on the market. The majority of the stockiest are now out of stock. However, you can keep checking the below-mentioned sites for availability from time to time. The coral USB accelerator would cost between $100 and $250.
Alternative to Coral USB Accelerator on the Market
If you want to buy a Coral USB accelerator and could not find one in the market, then the best option is the Intel Neural Movidius Myriad X VPU( Vision Processing Unit). This USB stick is designed by Intel. It has the capability of supporting computer vision processing with the help of machine learning. It is also capable of handling the tasks of artificial intelligence, such as object recognition and facial recognition.
Movidius Myriad supports Caffe, ApacheMXNet, Open Neural Network Exchange, and PyTorch in addition to TensorFlow. However, Google Coral outperforms any other USB Accelerator in terms of speed performance.
If you want to know more about this product, you can visit Intel/Movidius-Myriad
FAQ
What is Edge TPU?
Google Edge TPU is a TensorFlow processor that enables technology enthusiasts to create intelligent detecting devices employing sensors and Edge TPU machine learning capabilities. The wonderful thing about Edge TPU is that it provides you with smart detecting power without requiring you to connect to the internet.
What Precaution Need with Coral Edge TPU?
Coral Edge TPU is a chip that rapidly processes several commands and instructions, causing the CPU to heat up. We advise installing a heat sink with the Edge TPU design board to handle increased heating in the event of full processor power consumption. When you do not need peak processing power, you can set the optimal operating frequency instead of the maximum.
Does Coral USB work only with RasberryPi?
The Coral product manufacturer also provides a separate Dev board that can be programmed and used in various Machine Learning applications like a standard Raspberry-Pi MicroController. As a result, You no need to use Coral USB in the case of the Coral Dev board, allowing you to utilize a dedicated board instead of the Raspberry Pi board and USB accelerator for ML applications.