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AI model on a $3 chip (ESP32)

maxlab.io

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Re: AI model on a $3 chip (ESP32)

#11

Post by drdaeman »

daveloyall wrote: post #9
drdaeman wrote: post #8

Hmm... does it really work as advertised? Can it really run some basic object detection in real-time on-device, and at what resolution/framerate combination(s)? Sorry for being skeptical, just that it sounds too incredible to believe. I've toyed around with the same chips you're using, OV2640 with ESP32-S3 and at any decent resolution it simply seemed to lack the processing power to run even simple motion detection,…

I'm skeptical, too. But apparently OP isn't the only one using (or trying to use) "TensorFlow-Lite for Microcontrollers" on an ESP32-S3. See this (little bit of) chatter: https://github.com/tensorflow/tflite-micro/search?q=esp32&ty...

I haven't tried but it must be doable at low-res low-framerate conditions, where CPUs still have plenty of time left between the frames and frames aren't big (so maybe it can even fully decode those JPEGs, not just extract the DC coefficients for a quick-and-dirty hacks).

It's just the advertising page that sounds kinda unbelievable: low power, night vision, image analysis on the device, perfect for wildlife monitoring, can detect pests on crops (implying high resolution unless we're talking about deer and rabbits lol), etc etc.

Re: AI model on a $3 chip (ESP32)

#12

Post by nl »

drdaeman wrote: post #8

Hmm... does it really work as advertised? Can it really run some basic object detection in real-time on-device, and at what resolution/framerate combination(s)? Sorry for being skeptical, just that it sounds too incredible to believe. I've toyed around with the same chips you're using, OV2640 with ESP32-S3 and at any decent resolution it simply seemed to lack the processing power to run even simple motion detection,…

TFLite is designed for this:

> It has been tested extensively with many processors based on the Arm Cortex-M Series architecture, and has been ported to other architectures including ESP32.

https://www.tensorflow.org/lite/microcontrollers

Additionally there is an optimized kernel for ESP32: https://github.com/espressif/tflite-micro-esp-examples

Edit: personally, I like the Sipeed MAIX for this application, although the software was pretty annoying when I used it (in 2020).

Re: AI model on a $3 chip (ESP32)

#13

Post by steve_adams_86 »

drdaeman wrote: post #8

Hmm... does it really work as advertised? Can it really run some basic object detection in real-time on-device, and at what resolution/framerate combination(s)? Sorry for being skeptical, just that it sounds too incredible to believe. I've toyed around with the same chips you're using, OV2640 with ESP32-S3 and at any decent resolution it simply seemed to lack the processing power to run even simple motion detection,…

I’m able to do it with a less powerful chip, albeit low resolution and grayscale.

I’m hoping to make a pest detector for my automated hydroponic garden. It seems very tractable at this point.

Re: AI model on a $3 chip (ESP32)

#14

Post by graiz »

The ESP32 is a pretty standard sensor chip and the camera version is also widely available. A basic version of OpenCV was ported ~3 years ago, so it's cool but not sure what's new here.

Re: AI model on a $3 chip (ESP32)

#15

Post by txtai »

Very interesting! Looking forward to seeing more embedded AI devices coming out.

More NLP based, but here is an article on an effort to build Transformers micromodels to run on embedded devices. The model in this example is under 1MB. Goal would be to ultimately convert this from ONNX to TFLite.

https://neuml.hashnode.dev/train-a-language-model-from-scrat...

Re: AI model on a $3 chip (ESP32)

#17

Post by conductr »

drdaeman wrote: post #8

Hmm... does it really work as advertised? Can it really run some basic object detection in real-time on-device, and at what resolution/framerate combination(s)? Sorry for being skeptical, just that it sounds too incredible to believe. I've toyed around with the same chips you're using, OV2640 with ESP32-S3 and at any decent resolution it simply seemed to lack the processing power to run even simple motion detection,…

The video on the site really should highlight some of the capabilities. It was pretty pointless in “showing off” what it could do, which is typically what video is good for.

Re: AI model on a $3 chip (ESP32)

#18

Post by mitjam »

Also there is https://github.com/jomjol/AI-on-the-edge-device which digitalizes analoge water, gas, power and other meters. It uses the ESP32 camera module and local inference for character recognition. I found this very useful during the gas price hikes to identify effective saving measures. The inference speed is anything but realtime but for this use case fast enough. I took measurements every 5 minutes, the project states: Values smaller than 2 minutes do not make sense, as this is the time for one detection.
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