Ambiq Apollo5 evaluation boards

Introducing Apollo510 System-on-Chip (SoC), a cutting-edge solution engineered to revolutionize the landscape of ultra-low-power performance in conventional edge and AI applications. Leveraging Ambiq’s advanced Subthreshold Power Optimized Technology (SPOT®), Apollo510 delivers exceptional energy efficiency, operating on minimal power while providing unparalleled performance. Equipped with an Arm® Cortex®-M55 application processor running at up to 250MHz, this SoC enables efficient and high-performance computing, empowering developers to design innovative devices with ease. Apollo510 incorporates advanced security features in secureSPOT® 3.0 with TrustZone® technology, such as secure boot and secure firmware updates, ensuring the integrity and confidentiality of data transmitted and processed by connected devices, making it an ideal choice for secure deployment in bodyworn and ambient AI applications. Designed to meet the evolving needs of conventional edge and AI devices, the Apollo510 represents a significant leap forward in energy efficiency, performance, and security. With its unparalleled combination of ultra-low power operation, high-performance computing capabilities, and robust security features, this wireless SoC is designed to drive innovation and enable the next generation of smart and connected devices. Features

Up to 250 MHz Arm Cortex-M55 application processor with turboSPOT® and Helium™ technology
Enhanced memory performance with 64KB I-Cache and 64KB D-Cache, 3.75MB of system RAM, and 4MB of embedded non-volatile memory for code/data
Ultra-low power ADC and stereo digital microphone PDM interfaces for truly always-on voice
High-fidelity telco-quality audio
High-speed USB 2.0
Wide range of integrated sensor interfaces including ADC, SPI, I²C, and UART

Ambiq Apollo510 system-on-chip package — Ambiq Apollo5 SoC

Deployment options

Ambiq Apollo510 EVB firmware

A binary containing both the Edge Impulse data acquisition client and your full impulse.

Installing dependencies

To set this device up in Edge Impulse, you will need to install the following software:

Problems installing the CLI?See the Installation and troubleshooting guide.

Connecting the Apollo 5 Audio Add-on Board (Models with Audio Input Only)

This step is only needed when using models requiring microphone input, such as the example below. Skip this section if you are testing other models that do not need audio input. Connect the microphone board to the Apollo510-EVB as shown below.

Apollo510 evaluation board connected to a PDM microphone board — Apollo510-EVB With Microphone

Connecting an ArduCam Mega 5MP SPI

This step is only needed when using models requiring camera input. Skip this section if you are testing other models that do not need camera input. The ArduCam Mega 5MP SPI connects to the Apollo510-EVB pins as shown in the table below:

Camera Pin	EVB Pin
GND	Any EVB GND
5V/VDD	Any EVB 5V
SCK	Pin 47
MISO	Pin 49
MOSI	Pin 48
CS	Pin 60

ArduCam Mega 5MP SPI camera wired to the Apollo510 evaluation board — ArduCam connected

The wiring harness provided with the camera can be sensitive, so pin jumpers or another wiring harness may help

Flashing pre-built firmware

Pre-built image with only audio support and “Hello World” detector example here Get started by extracting the archive and choose the appropriate script for your system architecture to flash the firmware:

Terminal window running the Apollo5 firmware flashing script — Flashing new firmware

Connecting to Edge Impulse

Using the daemon

From a command prompt or terminal, run:

edge-impulse-daemon

This will start a wizard which will ask you to log in and choose an Edge Impulse project. If you want to switch projects run the command with --clean. Alternatively, you can access the project API Key as shown below by navigating to the Dashboard section on the left pane of your Studio project and select the Keys tab, then click the copy/paste icon next to the API Key to copy the entire text to your clipboard, then run:

edge-impulse-daemon --api-key [paste your key here]

Project dashboard Keys tab with the API key copy control highlighted — edge-impulse-api-key

Connecting to Studio

Run the edge-impulse-daemon and connect to your project, you will be prompted to name your device:

Terminal wizard connecting the Apollo5 board to an Edge Impulse project — Connecting to Edge Impulse.

That’s all! Your device is now connected to Edge Impulse. To verify this, go to your Edge Impulse project, and click Devices. The device will be listed here.

Devices page listing the connected Apollo5 evaluation board — Device connected to Edge Impulse.

Collecting data

Audio

With the device connected to Studio, you can use it to collect audio data up to 5 seconds in length for training and testing your model. Navigate to the Data acquisition tab and start collecting samples:

Daemon output during sampling:

Terminal output while collecting an audio sample from the Apollo5 board — Collecting an audio sample

Audio sample view with waveform collected from the Apollo5 board — Example sample

Video

Data acquisition page configured to collect an image sample — How to collect an image sample

Sampling images:

Camera feed frames being ingested from the Apollo5 board — Collecting an image sample

Three supported sizes 96x96, 128x128, 160x160:

Image sample previews collected at the supported camera sizes — Three different options

Next steps: building a machine learning model

With everything set up you can now build your first machine learning model with these tutorials:

Example project

Start by going to your Studio projects then create a new project and navigate to the Create impulse section of Impulse design, at which point you will be prompted to select your target, choose the Apollo5:

Create impulse page with Apollo5 selected as the target hardware — Choosing target hardware

Then add the DSP block:

Impulse design page with an audio processing block added — DSP

Then the keyword spotting learn block:

Impulse design page with a keyword spotting learning block added — KWS

And finally save the impulse:

Processing

Now select the DSP block:

Impulse design sidebar with the DSP block selected — Select DSP

And go to Generate features:

Generate features page for the Apollo5 example project — Generate features

Click the button and wait for the job to finish, when it does you’ll see something like this:

Feature explorer showing generated DSP features for the Apollo5 example project — DSP complete

Training

Select the learning block:

Impulse design sidebar with the learning block selected — Select learning block

Then click Save & train and you’ll eventually see an output like this:

Training output for the Apollo5 keyword spotting model — Training

Testing

Go to the Model testing section and enable int8 testing:

And run the test:

Model testing results for the trained Apollo5 model — Test results

Deploying

Navigate to the Deployment section and choose the Apollo 5:

Deployment page with Apollo5 selected — Selecting the Apollo5

Now click Build and wait for the job to finish, when it does a zip archive will be downloaded to your computer.

Flashing

See the previous section on flashing the board.

Running the impulse

You can run your impulse by using edge-impulse-run-impulse:

Terminal output from edge-impulse-run-impulse on the Apollo5 board — Running the impulse

Troubleshooting

If you have problems with the flashing script make sure you are using USB cables with data and not just power-only cables. Reach out to us on the forum and have fun making machine learning models on the Apollo510-EVB from Ambiq!

OVERVIEW

GETTING YOUR DEVICE EDGE IMPULSE READY

DEVICES

BOARDS

DEPLOYMENTS

Deployment options

Installing dependencies