Ambiq Apollo510

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

Installing dependencies

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

1. Edge Impulse CLI

2. Segger JLink

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.

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:

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:

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]

Connecting to Studio

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

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.

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:

Video

Sampling images:

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

Next steps: building a machine learning model

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

• Recognizing sounds from audio

• Keyword spotting

• Detecting objects with FOMO

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:

Then add the DSP block:

Then the keyword spotting learn block:

And finally save the impulse:

DSP

Now select the DSP block:

And go to Generate features:

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

Training

Select the learning block:

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

Testing

Go to the Model testing section and enable int8 testing:

And run the test:

Deploying

Navigate to the Deployment section and choose the Apollo 5:

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:

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!