Shenzhen Xunlong Software launched Orange Pi AI Stick 2801 neural compute stick last year for $69. It was interesting as an alternative to Intel Neural Compute Stick. But once the documentation and SDK were released a few days later we discovered you could only run demos with the stick for that price, and the training tools would cost an extra $149.
The excellent news is that the company has now launched an updated, yet similar Orange Pi AI Stick Lite for just $19.99, and best of all the PLAI training tools are now entirely free.
Orange Pi AI Stick Lite specifications:
- ASIC – Gyrfalcon SPR2801S Lightspeeur series processor with 2-dimensional Matrix Processing Engine (MPE) with AI Processing in Memory (APiM) delivering up to 2.8TOPS @ 300mW, 5.6 TOPS @ 100 MHz (peak performance)
- Storage – eMMC 4.5 flash with 68 MB/s read, 84.69 MB/s write
- Host interface – USB 3.0/2.0 port
- Power Consumption – 5V @ 200mA
- Dimensions – 66.5 x 20.5 x 10.8 mm
- Temperature Range – Operating: 0 to 40°C; storage: -20 to 80°C
The hardware specifications look the same as last year’s model. Supported frameworks include Tensorflow, Caffe and PyTorch, and VGG & SSD models can run on the stick.
The company mentions compatibility with Allwinner based Orange Pi SBC’s, but the SDK is offered for Arm and x86 together with 1-2 model demos. The Plai training tools (aka model transformation tools) which allow customizing the models running on the stick are now provided for free, but for some unknown reason, the company does not provide a public download link and instead tells people to contact them to get it.
All related public documentation available on Orange Pi website was released in November 2018.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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Interesting. Have you bought this? Does it really working as advertised?
I don’t have one. The strange part is that they don’t want to provide a public link to download the training tools. Maybe they only want to give it to paid customers?
Yes, I’ve seen that. Also it states that the model transformation tools only support CNN from caffe.
That’s a bit restrictive as most of the people are moving to Keras or Tensorflow. OK, sure you can transform models between those higher level tools, but still this is an additional effort.
I’m triggered, as I was waiting for a cheap stick, but because I’ve already have too many useless HW in my drawers, I’ll probably keep watching on it and see if anyone publishes a review.
I’ll try to ask for a sample to give it a try. If I do get one it will take a few more weeks for the review though.
That would be great Jean-Luc! The price is really good and I’m curious how it performs. Thanks!
That would be awesome, than you!
I am keeping an eye on the market, specially for a tool compatible with yolo and feasible to be deployed in nautical settings, therefore power consumption would be interesting.
Yes with a howto serving as an intro for all of us still having zero idea where to start from.
The reason you can’t download the tools seems to be because they are ‘for sale’ by the chipmaker: https://dev.gyrfalcontech.ai/register
They should have a free version that works with Orange Pi AI Stick Lite, or the company is just lying.