Deployment
After training and validating your model, you can now deploy it to any device. This makes the model run without an internet connection, minimizes latency, and runs with minimal power consumption.
The Deployment page consists of a variety of deployment options to choose from depending on your target device. Regardless of whether you are using a fully supported development board or not, you can deploy your impulse to any device. The C++ library and Edge Impulse SDK enable the model to run without an internet connection on the device, minimize latency, and with minimal power consumption.
You can also select different model optimization options on the deployment page:
Model version: Quantized (int8) vs unoptimized (float32) versions.
Compiler options: TFLite vs EON Compiler. The EON Compiler also comes with an extra option: EON Compiler (RAM optimized) to reduce the RAM even further when possible.
There are 6 main deployment options currently supported by Edge Impulse:
Deploy as a customizable library
Deploy as a pre-built firmware - for fully supported development boards
Use Edge Impulse for Linux for Linux targets
Deploy as a Docker container
Run directly on your phone or computer
Create a custom deployment block (Enterprise feature)
From the Deployment page, select the Search deployment options search box to select and configure a deployment option:
Deploy as a customizable library
These deployment options let you turn your impulse into a fully optimized source code that can be further customized and integrated with your application. The customizable library packages all of your signal processing blocks, configuration and machine learning blocks into a single package with all available source code. Edge Impulse supports the following libraries (depending on your dataset's sensor type):
Ethos-U library
Meta TF model
Simplicity Studio Component
Tensai Flow library
TensorRT library
TIDL-RT library
Deploy as a pre-built firmware
For these deployment options, you can use a ready-to-go binary for your development board that bundles signal processing blocks, configuration and machine learning blocks into a single package. This option is available for fully supported development boards.
To deploy your model using ready-to-go binaries, select your target device and click "build". Flash the downloaded firmware to your device then run the following command:
The impulse runner shows the results of your impulse running on your development board. This only applies to ready-to-go binaries built from the studio.
If your training and testing datasets include a sensor data type that is not supported by a deployment target, the search box will include these greyed out with a Not supported label:
Edge Impulse for Linux
If you are developing for Linux-based devices, you can use Edge Impulse for Linux for deployment. It contains tools that let you collect data from any microphone or camera, can be used with the Node.js, Python, Go and C++ SDKs to collect new data from any sensor, and can run impulses with full hardware acceleration - with easy integration points to write your own applications.
For a deep dive into deploying your impulse to Linux targets using Edge Impulse for Linux, you can visit the Edge Impulse for Linux guides.
Deploy using a Docker container
Deploying Edge Impulse models as a Docker container allows for packaging signal processing, configurations, and learning blocks into a single container that exposes an HTTP inference server. This method is ideal for environments supporting containerized workloads, facilitating deployment on gateways or in the cloud with full hardware acceleration for most Linux targets. Users can initiate deployment by selecting the "Docker container" option within the Deployment section of their Edge Impulse project.
See how to run inference using a Docker container.
Deploy to your mobile phone/computer
You can run your impulse directly on your computer/mobile phone without the need of an additional app. To run on your computer, click Launch in browser. To run on your mobile phone, scan the QR code and click Switch to classification mode.
Latest build
Download the most recent build from your project's deployment page under Latest build:
Model optimizations
EON Compiler
When building your impulse for deployment, Edge Impulse gives you the option of adding another layer of optimization to your impulse using the EON compiler.
The EON Compiler lets you run neural networks using less RAM, and saving flash resource, while retaining the same accuracy compared to TensorFlow Lite for Microcontrollers.
Depending on your neural network architecture, we can also provide one extra layer of optimization with the EON Compiler (RAM optimized).
You can also select whether to run the unquantized float32 or the quantized int8 models. To compare model accuracy, run model testing in your project by clicking Run model testing.
To have a peek at how your impulse would utilize compute resources of your target device, Edge Impulse also gives an estimate of latency, flash, and RAM to be consumed by your target device even before deploying your impulse locally. This can save you a lot of engineering time, and costs incurred by recurring iterations and experiments.
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