Very nice! I recently went to see Evil Dead the Musical, and i'm working on an animatronic moose head / google assistant (although maybe alexa or cortana, still undecided). So this would be extra cool to drive it!

I'm a software developer by day (normally windows C#), but have done projects both professionally + personally in python on raspberry pis, and have a bit of linux experience. So the beagle bone would fit in nicely!

As I'm not fond of esoterics in general, I still would like to see this one made and learn about the concepts you use to implement the features described.

jissdeodates, this project of yours is really interesting, and if put to an upgrade using a BB AI board, it would certainly become a powerful one than the current state with Raspberry Pi. All the best. Would love to await the results to see how vision and voice would make a perfect mix.

If I were to win a board, my next BBAI project, would be to make a Ghost Catching Camera.  This is for a buddy of mine who is a local ghost hunter.  It's going to have night vision, streaming video (so they can set it up and go onward to other rooms), motion detection, and other anomaly detection.  It will also translate the spirit world to audible languages.

I have already started the project with another card, but since then, the BBAI came out.  I did a deep dive on it in the following blogs and found the BBAI would be much preferred for the application.

BBAI Seein' Around Corners, Talkin', IoT Exploitin' Backup Car Cam with Onboard Vision AI

BeagleBone AI Survival Guide V3.18: PWM, I2C, Analog/Digital Read/Write, Vision AI, Video Text Overlays, Audio, & Hardware

Very cool project you have there! For sure the BB-Ai needs some things to be worked out, to make all your features purely run on its own hardware, as senn in my video. but it should be more than capable to do this.

current results with the EVE/DSP cores seem promissing, even the frist  examples were similar to the RPI3B+ performance we have seen earlier.
The PRUs proved perfect for realtime Servo/motor control as seen in projects like the pocketbeaglepowered Drone (found on beagleboard.org) the Replicape(a 3d printer board based on the BBB) and various other robotics projects.
I'm certain you can make it work on this Plattform. if you need Long range connectivity over LTE you may want to wait for the latest offerings of Arduino, they may add to their MKR range.

I hope you have applied for the BB-AI Roadtest and Vision thing contest!

tariq.ahmad, cstanton, Wow, this seems to be a good opportunity to get our hands on the BB AI and the MayerMakes' Add-On Cape.

Also, this terminator skull by mayermakes is really a motivation to think out of the box for any possibilities to use a given module.

For learning and understanding the capabilities of BB AI, I would like to transfer the project that I have done on Rpi 3 on to the BB AI not only to resolve the bottleneck issues imposed by the Rpi, but also to add more scalability to my project.

The project develops a smart device to detect a person with the help of image processing and take voice control commands from that user. This is to be deployed in industrial and emergency assist drones. The project is developed as part of my Bachelor thesis work and as part of a Hackster Competition where we won one of the grand prizes for a project that uses a part from this concept.  We have published 2 papers regarding this project at an International conference and also in a journal.

The real need to switch to BB AI is the fact that Rpi 3 that is being used now shows a lot of lag in the performance (currently running on OpenCV 3.2.0). It also restricts the scalability of the project as it limits the AI applications that can be run onboard. So I believe, after understanding the specs of BB AI, thanks to the EVE's, it will be able to perform a lot better and faster than the Rpi and also enable scalability to my application.

Regarding the voice control, though the Rpi ran on Sphinx base for voice recognition, with BB AI, I will be able to use more advanced AI algorithms (Eg Using Tensorflow, still learning this topic as part of my ML research) to run the detection algorithm with an increase in the performance, thanks to the DSP onboard for audio analysis.

Another issue I faced with Rpi was the controlling of onboard servos on the drone (for the pan-tilt mechanism of the camera). The issue can be resolved using a relevant Rpi HAT, but with the cost of adding more electronics and thereby more weight and complexity to the drone. With the BB AI, I would like to investigate the possibility of smooth and precise control of the servo motors using the PRU's.

The availability of onboard networking interface (WiFi) and onboard storage (eMMC Flash) is an added advantage to my application as the drone will be controlled over WiFi for short-range operations. The possibility of an LTE interface for long-range operation is under discussion.

Regarding my technical experience, I am a Computer Science graduate and I am passionate about Robotics. Currently learning on the theory and practices of Machine learning. In case I am selected to receive one of the kits, I will be documenting my project's transition from Rpi to BB AI and the further journey in the Beaglebone community space at Element14.

Jiss

Clem,

Thanks for this. I will have to try this out.

Dubbie

I have connected the camera over usb directly to the BBAI. it is just hardwired into a usb hub that also connects the arduinos Data+/Data- Lines to the BBAI.

if you want t ouse a camera with the BBAI a connection over USB should work(if it can use the current generic usb drivers).
if it is a device that needs an MCU to preprocess the data you could attach it to the arduino(some modules use I2C or SPI, do not know about your particular camera) and den push the data as Serial.write(camData); over USB to the BBAI.

I don't know all our subscribers personally, but I guess so..how would that release date worked out so wll if it would be otherwise ;-)

How're you transferring data for the LDR camera? It might be a matter that you can do this directly from the BB AI without using the Arduino.