Hi everyone,

So we've been heads-down preparing for our Crowd Supply campaign launch (hence a bit of lack of updates here lately). 

In preparation for that, we got our github up, which should the campaign succeed, will host our source design files for both hardware and software.  (If the campaign doesn't succeed, we're going to keep these hardware and software source files internal for our own use only).

So without further ado, below are some details on the Crowd Supply campaign (which can be found on our github as well, here).

DepthAI Crowd Supply Campaign

We are launching a CrowdSupply campaign (https://www.crowdsupply.com/luxonis/depthai) to bring the power of the Myriad X to your design. If the campaign is successful we will be releasing the designs (hardware and software) for the following Myriad X carrier boards here on Github - to enable engineers and makers to build their own solutions, leveraging our source designs/code.

In addition to the designs shown above (which will be purchase-able through the campaign), we will be releasing an ordered, but not-yet-received version which integrates all 3 cameras onto a single board with a USB3C interface to the host, shown on the bottom right below.

The Why of DepthAI

The Myriad X is WAY faster and a TON of features are only accessible when cameras are connected directly to it over MIPI. Take object detection below as an example: 

So that's 25FPS instead of 8FPS... and that frame-rate is achieved with no host processing AT ALL! (Technically, you can run DepthAI with no host at all - but often you'll want a host so that other business-logic code can be run based on the output of DepthAI... like 'pick only the ripe strawberries')

There's more to it than just being faster though... the DepthAI platform is engineered from the ground up to enable the original vision of the Myriad X - which is to allow low-power, high-efficiency vision processing including stereo depth, motion estimation, and neural inference. Existing platforms have no MIPI interface and only have a PCIE or USB inferface and so cannot take advantage of a TON of the hardware modules built into the Myriad X which are only (meaningfully) usable with MIPI:

• Stereo Depth
• Edge Detection
• Harris Filtering
• Warp/De-Warp
• Motion Estimation
• ISP Pipeline
• JPEG Encoding
• H.264 and H.265 Encoding

The How and What of DepthAI:

So to allow the use of these, DepthAI is engineered to allow direct MIPI connection:

And to allow this power to be integrate-able into actual products (which may require differing stereo baselines, differing interfaces, geometries, etc.) and to make hardware integration much easier (removing the need to integrate a very-fine-pitch multi-hundred-ball BGA into your design) we made a System on Module to hold the Myriad X:

This module enables a simple and standard tolerance PCB, instead of the high-layer-count and high-density-integration (including laser vias and stacked vias) required to integrate the Myriad X directly. And it also provides all the power supply rails, power sequencing, clock generation, and camera-support hardware on-module.

This allows you to integrate the power of the Myriad X into your design with a standard 4-layer (or even 2-layer, gasp!) PCB. And then leverage our reference hardware and software designs to get up/going super-fast (or just buy our boards directly, if they happen to fit the bill for what you need). Which all results in getting up/running fast: 

So what are the reference designs (the carrier boards) which will be released should the campaign be funded?

DepthAI | Raspberry Pi Compute Module

This design allows you to have the Myriad X, all the cameras, and the Raspberry Pi on one board. So that you don't have to worry about cabling things together, boards strewn about your desk, etc. when prototyping and writing code.

DepthAI | Raspberry Pi HAT with FFC Camera Interfaces

  

This design allows you to leverage your existing Raspberry Pi (and perhaps even its mounting on your platform) and simply add this DepthAI hat to get this AI, depth, and vision processing power. Off-board modular cameras allow integration up to 6 inches away from the Pi/HAT.

DepthAI | USB3 with FFC Camera Interfaces

  

This design allows you to leverage DepthAI with whichever platform you choose. It works with anything that runs OpenVINO, which is a lot of systems.

• Linux: Ubuntu - Yocto Project - CentOS - Raspbian
• Mac OS X
• Windows 10

Note: We have a preliminary system working which actually works with the Raspberry Pi Camera V2.1... but the ISP is still a bit broken so it flashes at lighting transitions/etc. If there's sufficient interest we'll finish this proof-of-concept driver/camera tuning for the Myriad X and release hardware to support the Pi V2.1 camera as well.

DepthAI | Modular (FFC) Cameras

We designed these modular cameras to have the same mounting pattern and board size as the Raspberry Pi V2.1 camera so that existing mounts/etc. likely can be used (or lightly modified and used). That and, the size was going to be super close anyways, so why not go ahead and -not- make yet another mechanical mounting standard?

 

Want to build things off this? Or want to buy these straight up? Support our CrowdSupply to make this a reality: https://www.crowdsupply.com/luxonis/depthai

Best, 

Brandon and the Luxonis team!