Getting started with HUMMINGBOARD 8P EDGE AI

Owned by Mikhail Anikin
Last updated: Nov 22, 2023
8 min read

This guide contains tips and resources for a quick start with IMX8MP HummingBoard Pro and Hailo-8 AI accelerator.

Setup

Cable setup and prerequisites

Here is what you will need to power up and use the board:

  • Linux or Windows PC

  • HummingBoard Pro with IMX.8MP SOM and Hailo-8 M.2 B+M module (hummingBoard 8P EDGE AI kit)

  • 12V Power adapter (HummingBoard Pro has wide range input of 7V-28V), alternatively you can use a PoE injector to power the device.

  • Micro USB to USB cable.

  • HDMI Cable and monitor

  • MicroSD Card

Preparing a boot SD card

To start the IMX.8 HummingBoard Pro with Hailo-8, download the prebuilt demo image or build the demo image from the sources.

Writing the image to the SD card

Use the following commands for writing the image to an SD card:

zstd -k -d imx-hailo-demo-image-imx8mpsolidrun.wic.zst sudo dd if=imx-hailo-demo-image-imx8mpsolidrun.wic of=/dev/sdX bs=1M

Note: Plug a micro SD into your Linux PC, the following assumes that the micro SD is added as /dev/sdX and all its partitions are unmounted.

Boot Select

Before powering up the board for the first time, it is recommended to select the boot media. To configure the boot media, please refer to HummingBoard Pulse and Ripple Boot Select.

Here is the correct DIP switch position for SD boot:

 

Note: The black rectangle represents the switch position.

Preparing the board

Ensure the Hailo-8 M.2 module with a heatsink is installed into the M.2 connector on the bottom of the board.

  • Connect an HDMI and micro USB cable.

  • Insert an SD card into the board.

  • [optional] Connect the MIPI camera to the MIPI interface.

 

Boot

Please refer to Serial Connection for installing the necessary serial connection software in Linux/Windows. You are ready to boot the board once you have installed the required serial connection software. Plug the DC power supply. The board will start booting, and you will see the boot log in your terminal.

[ OK ] Started User Database Manager. [ OK ] Created slice User Slice of UID 0. Starting User Runtime Directory /run/user/0... [ OK ] Finished User Runtime Directory /run/user/0. Starting User Manager for UID 0... [ OK ] Started User Manager for UID 0. [ OK ] Started Session c1 of User root. [ OK ] Started Weston, a Wayland …mpositor, as a system service. [ OK ] Reached target Graphical Interface. Starting Record Runlevel Change in UTMP... [ OK ] Finished Record Runlevel Change in UTMP. NXP i.MX Release Distro 5.15-kirkstone imx8mpsolidrun ttymxc1 imx8mpsolidrun login:

The default user is root.

Also, you will see a Weston desktop environment on the monitor screen:

Launching demo applications

By default, there are three demo applications included in the imx-hailo-demo-image.

  • detection

  • license_plate_recognition

  • multistream_detection

The detection demo takes the video source from the v4l video device, and you need a camera connected to the device to run this demo.

Usually, the MIPI camera is represented as /dev/video2 device in Linux.

To run this demo:

./apps/detection/detection.sh -i /dev/video2

The license_plate_recognition demo uses prerecorded video for detecting car license plates.

To run this demo:

The multistream_detection demo uses prerecorded videos. To run this demo:

For more demo applications, please refer to the Hailo Tappas repo.

For more info about the hailo devices, libraries, and network training, please refer to the Hailo Developer Zone.

Additional autostart demos

It is possible to include additional demos into the image that will be running at the start.

To enable additional demos, add the following line to your local.conf

By default, the service starts the general detection demo.

To change it, add the following line to your local.conf

Available demos:

  • general_detection.sh - Live stream from MIPI-CSI camera with general object detection.

  • lpr_loop.sh - Looped license plate recognition demo.

  • multistream_detection.sh - Live stream from two MIPI-CSI cameras with general object detection.

Note: these demos are tested only with imx-hailo-demo-image.

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