Raspberry Pi Manual Setup

Edge devices are small, lightweight, devices on which a computer vision application can be deployed and run. Many edge devices today even have a Graphical Processing Unit (GPU), or Visual Processing Unit (VPU), which enable usage of a greater range of models and application complexity. This has many benefits, including reduced cost, reduced latency, and improved security. When you use alwaysAI to develop computer vision applications, you can easily run any your applications on a variety of different edge devices with minor changes to configuration.

To meet the minimum requirements, your edge device needs to be running a Linux-based OS with Docker installed. We’ve tested the following operating systems with the edgeIQ Docker images:

  • Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm or Bullseye

Your device also needs to have SSH access set up (SSH is required for the alwaysAI CLI to communicate with the device), and must be USB-camera or ribbon-camera capable (for apps that will be using a real-time video feed from a connected camera).

Download and install the Raspberry Pi Imager from the official Raspberry Pi website: https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/.

Use the Raspberry Pi Imager to select the OS from the list. We recommend Raspberry Pi OS 64 bit. When prompted about OS customization settings, select edit settings and configure the following:

  • Set hostname to the hostname of your choice.

  • Set the username and password to the settings of your choice.

  • If desired, configure wireless LAN to your settings.

  • Set the local timezone.

  • Under the “services” tab enable SSH

Once the image is flashed to the SD card, insert it into your Pi and power it up. Test the SSH connection from your host computer:

$ ssh <username>@<hostname or IP address>

Note: If you’re having trouble locating your device on the network, mDNS can be used on Mac and Linux systems, enabling you to use <hostname>.local as the hostname. Installation on Windows is possible but tricky. Another option is to find and use the IP address of the device in place of the hostname.

Next, install Docker following the official Docker guides:

Make sure to follow the Linux postinstall guide to enable Docker for non-root users.

Now that your Raspberry Pi is set up, you can see how you can run the starter applications from your terminal: Run a Starter Application.

Your Debian device is now ready to go!