Creating a Smart and Safe Haven: The Perfect Blend of Seeed Studio reTerminal, Home Assistant OS, and Frigate with Coral AI USB TPU
Introduction
In an era where smart technology seamlessly integrates into our daily lives, the pursuit of an intelligent and secure home automation system has never been more compelling. Picture a scenario where your home not only caters to your needs but also promptly identifies and notifies you of suspicious activities in your backyard. This is where the convergence of cutting-edge hardware and open-source software takes center stage.
In this article, we’ll delve into the dynamic synergy between the Seeed Studio reTerminal, Home Assistant OS, and the Frigate add-on with Coral AI USB TPU. This transformative trio offers a unique opportunity to establish a centralized, privacy-conscious, and AI-driven home automation setup that not only enhances your lifestyle but also ensures the safety of your loved ones and property.
Join us as we embark on a journey to explore the advantages, functionalities, and boundless potential of this exceptional fusion at the forefront of contemporary smart living.
Advantages
Integrating Home Assistant OS on the Seeed Studio reTerminal and then installing Frigate as an add-on, along with a Coral USB TPU (Tensor Processing Unit), can offer several benefits for your smart home setup and home automation projects.
- Local Processing and Privacy: ensure that data processing and object detection occur within your own network.
- Reduced Latency: local processing with the Coral USB TPU can reduce latency in object detection, leading to quicker response times for automation triggers and notifications.
- Customizable Automation: with Home Assistant OS and Frigate, you can create custom automation based on the detected objects.
- Local Storage and Control: provides you with more control over your security data and allows you to review and analyze events at your convenience.
- AI-powered Object Detection: it can identify and categorize objects such as people, animals, and vehicles. This capability enhances your home security by providing real-time alerts and notifications for specific events.
Softwares
Frigate
Frigate is an open-source NVR built around real-time AI object detection. All processing is performed locally on your own hardware, and your camera feeds never leave your home.
Home Assistant OS
Home Assistant OS is an operating system designed specifically for running Home Assistant, an open-source home automation platform. Home Assistant allows you to control and automate various smart devices and services in your home.
Home Assistant OS provides a streamlined and optimized environment for running Home Assistant. It comes pre-installed with the necessary components to set up and manage your smart home devices, integrate with different protocols and platforms, and create automation routines.
Hardwares
reTerminal
reTerminal is Seeed’s first generation Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 (CM4) powered HMI device. Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 (CM4) is a Quad-Core Cortex-A72 CPU running at 1.5GHz and a 5-inch IPS capacitive multi-touch screen with a resolution of 1280 x 720. It has a sufficient amount of RAM (4GB or 8GB) to perform multitasking and also has a sufficient amount of eMMC storage (32GB) to install an operating system, enabling fast boot-up times and a smooth overall experience. It has wireless connectivity with dual-band 2.4GHz/5GHz Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0 BLE.
Google Coral AI USB TPU stick
The Google Coral AI USB TPU stick is a compact and powerful hardware accelerator designed to accelerate machine learning tasks. It leverages Google’s Edge TPU architecture to deliver efficient and rapid inferencing for AI models, making it ideal for applications like real-time object detection, image classification, and more, directly at the edge of your devices. Its USB form factor allows easy integration into a wide range of platforms, empowering developers and enthusiasts to enhance AI capabilities in their projects with speed and precision.
Solution
In this demonstration, Home Assistant OS was installed on the reTerminal, followed by the installation of Frigate NVR in full access mode. The capabilities of the Coral AI Edge TPU were then utilized to conduct real-time object detection through an RTSP (Real Time Stream Protocol) stream. This integration enables the smooth and accurate identification of objects, highlighting the potential of combining advanced hardware and software for elevated home automation and security.
More tips: click this wiki to know more about how to integrate Frigate with reTerminal.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the harmonious integration of Home Assistant OS on the reTerminal, coupled with the deployment of Frigate NVR in full access mode and the utilization of the Coral AI Edge TPU, represents a remarkable leap forward in the realm of home automation and security. This synergy exemplifies the potency of cutting-edge technologies working in tandem to empower users with real-time object detection and accurate monitoring through an RTSP stream. By capitalizing on the strengths of each component, this setup not only enhances convenience and control but also instills a heightened sense of security, all while maintaining the privacy and local processing that today’s users value. As smart home ecosystems continue to evolve, such innovative amalgamations pave the way for a future where homes are not only smarter but also safer, exemplifying the extraordinary potential that lies at the intersection of AI-driven hardware and open-source software.
Seeed Studio's Raspberry Pi Ecosystem
Seeed Studio has been serving the Raspberry Pi user community since 2013 and took the lead to join the approved reseller and design partner. Since the first version of reTerminal in 2021, we have a series of products including reRouter, edge controller series, and this year reTerminal DM, serving creators, makers, enthusiasts, students, engineers, enterprises as well as industries, and every scenario needing Raspberry Pi.
Explore more products, full system devices, customization services, and use cases on the Seeed Raspberry Pi page.
Download our latest Raspberry Pi success case booklet to know how Seeed and Seeed’s Raspberry Pi-powered products and solutions assist in tackling real-world challenges. If you need any customization based on Raspberry Pi, please check out our customization services.
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