Echo Show makes science fiction home video conference nearer to reality

I have just decided to get my hand onto the new Amazon Alexa Echo Show
It is equivalent to an Echo Dot with a touch screen. What i like to explore is I can call another echo show owner by voice. What i watch as a child in science fiction show is now becoming a home consumer product. I have being using video conference products in my work since 2007, like webex, lifesize, skype for business, but none of them is voice activated. People will argue that Siri can do it but so far it is not of my liking. Not to mention, the iphone is much costlier than a device like echo show. I have actually also combine laptop, webcam and skype to video conference with my family member as early as 2009 but the usage is not very friendly from senior citizen. The Echo Show comes with 2 colours. For me, i prefer black :)

Age of embedded GPU Processing

As deep neural network (DNN) is becoming more popular in cognitive applications as such object detection, so is the embedded device meant to power it. For the past one month, i am trying out vision application for some demos to customers as well as self hobbyist project. I have run the Renesas GR Peach camera module and its video is noticeable not fast (although considering that it is an ARM MCU, it is still very impressive). I then try to do video processing with Zedboard, a Zynq powered FPGA board, but the workflow is rather tedious and requires lots of work. A latest device that i am looking at is the NVidia Jetson TX2.

It is a credit card size embedded board powered by dual core NVIDIA Denver2 and quad-core ARM Cortex-A57. It boasts a 8GB 128-bit LPDDR4 and integrated 256-core Pascal GPU. NVidia has a developer zone that provide resource for developer to play with the kit. So far i am still at the stage of literature review. The embedded board is meant for doing robotic and drone application.

I am planning to perform DNN with it. To ease learning curve in CUDA, i am going be using MATLAB to develop it. The parallel computing toolbox currently enable us to write algorithmn that can make use of GPU with simple syntax. In addition, the forthcoming the CPU Coder enable user to convert it into CUDA code, subsequently deploy it onto an embedded board like Jetson TX2.

The developer kit is launched somewhere in March 17 and now can be purchased online at Amazon. It can be shipped to south east asia free of charge.