Mixtile's Edge AI Box Turns a Blade 3 or Edge 2 Kit Into a Computer Vision Processor for IP Cameras

Cluster and edge computing specialist Mixtile has announced its Edge AI Box, a way to transform its Mixtile Blade 3 or Mixtile Edge 2 Kit systems into computer vision powerhouses — and to give off-the-shelf ONVIF IP cameras artificial intelligence.

"[The] Mixtile Edge AI solution transforms any ONVIF camera into a smart AI camera, enabling object detection, object classification, real-time analysis, and intelligent monitoring," the company explains of its latest launch. "This solution caters to a wide range of comprehensive IoT video analytics applications, providing cost-effective and easy deployment across security, transportation, logistics, retail, industry, and agriculture."

Despite being termed a "box," the Edge AI Box isn't hardware at all; rather, it's a software stack designed to be deployed on the company's existing Mixtile Blade 3 or Mixtile Edge 2 Kit hardware. Specifications vary, as a result, based on the underlying hardware: running on the Blade 3, the Edge AI Box can handle 48 megapixels and up to 40 streams at once; on the lower-end Edge 2 Kit, it's limited to eight megapixels and up to 10 streams.

In either case, the Edge AI Box taps into the devices' integrated neural processing unit (NPU) to handle a range of edge-AI computer vision tasks including image classification, object detection, facial recognition, counting, and even behavioral analysis — all based on pre-trained models. For those looking to experiment, the platform also offers support for development using TensorFlow, Caffe2, PyTorch, and ONNX, the company has confirmed.

"ONVIF cameras transmit video streams to [the] Mixtile Edge AI Box over the network," the company explains of a reference implementation. "[The] Mixtile Edge AI Box receives these video streams and runs pre-trained AI models to analyze them in real-time. After processing the video data, Mixtile Edge AI Box transfers the analyzed results to third-party VMS [Video Management Systems]. It can trigger alarms, start recording, or send notifications to administrators' mobile devices based on predefined rules."

More information on the Mixtile Edge AI box is available on the company website; interested parties are advised to contact Mixtile to get started.