Sony's Spresense
Last updated
Was this helpful?
Last updated
Was this helpful?
is a small, but powerful development board with a 6 core Cortex-M4F microcontroller and integrated GPS, and a wide variety of add-on modules including an extension board with headphone jack, SD card slot and microphone pins, a camera board, a sensor board with accelerometer, pressure, and geomagnetism sensors, and Wi-Fi board - and it's fully supported by Edge Impulse. You'll be able to sample raw data, build models, and deploy trained machine learning models directly from the studio.
To get started with the Sony Spresense and Edge Impulse you'll need:
The - available for around 55 USD from a wide range of distributors.
The - to connect external sensors.
A micro-SD card to store samples.
In addition you'll want some sensors, these ones are fully supported (note that you can collect data from any sensor on the Spresense with the ):
For image models: the .
For accelerometer models: the .
For audio models: an electret microphone and a 2.2K Ohm resistor, wired to the extension board's audio channel A, following ().
Note: for audio models you must also have a FAT formatted SD card for the extension board, with the Spresense's DSP files included in a BIN folder on the card, and a .
The Edge Impulse firmware for this development board is open source and hosted on GitHub: .
To set this device up in Edge Impulse, you will need to install the following software:
On Linux:
GNU Screen: install for example via sudo apt install screen.
Problems installing the CLI?
With all the software in place it's time to connect the development board to Edge Impulse.
Make sure the SD card is formatted as FAT before inserting it into the Spresense.
Use a micro-USB cable to connect the main development board (not the extension board) to your computer.
The development board does not come with the right firmware yet. To update the firmware:
Open the flash script for your operating system (flash_windows.bat, flash_mac.command or flash_linux.sh) to flash the firmware.
Wait until flashing is complete. The on-board LEDs should stop blinking to indicate that the new firmware is running.
From a command prompt or terminal, run:
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.
With everything set up you can now build your first machine learning model with these tutorials:
If you see:
Upgrade pyserial:
If the edge-impulse-daemon or edge-impulse-run-impulse commands do not start it might be because of an error interacting with the SD card or because your board has an old version of the bootloader. To see the debug logs, run:
And press the RESET button on the board. If you see Welcome to nash you'll need to update the bootloader. To do so:
Install and launch the Arduino IDE.
Go to Preferences and under 'Additional Boards Manager URLs' add https://github.com/sonydevworld/spresense-arduino-compatible/releases/download/generic/package_spresense_index.json (if there's already text in this text box, add a , before adding the new URL).
Then go to Tools > Boards > Board manager, search for 'Spresense' and click Install.
Select the right board via: Tools > Boards > Spresense boards > Spresense.
Select your serial port via: Tools > Port and selecting the serial port for the Spresense board.
Select the Spresense programmer via: Tools > Programmer > Spresense firmware updater.
Update the bootloader via Tools > Burn bootloader.
.
See the guide.
Install .
, and unzip the file.
Alternatively, recent versions of Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge can collect data directly from your development board, without the need for the Edge Impulse CLI. See for more information.
That's all! Your device is now connected to Edge Impulse. To verify this, go to , and click Devices. The device will be listed here.
Looking to connect different sensors? The lets you easily send data from any sensor into Edge Impulse.
Then update the firmware again (from ).
