Microsoft Releases Vision AI Development Kit Based on Qualcomm’s Vision Intelligence Platform

During Microsoft’s annual Build developers conference in May of this year, the company unveiled a partnership with Qualcomm to bring about a developer kit for vision machine learning applications. Earlier this month, Microsoft and Qualcomm announced the release of the Vision AI Developer Kit, which includes a smart camera that uses Qualcomm’s Vision Intelligence 300 platform, as well as Microsoft’s Azure IoT Edge and Azure Machine Learning software edge solutions.

According to Microsoft, “It supports an end-to-end Azure enabled solution with real-time image processing locally on the edge device, and model training and management on Azure. The Vision AI Developer Kit, made by our partner eInfochips, can now be ordered…” Microsoft has also uploaded Visual Studio Code with Python modules, prebuilt Azure IoT deployment configurations, and a Vision AI Developer Kit extension for Visual Studio to the company’s GitHub page.

Included in the kit is the EIC MS Vision SNPE 500 camera, which comes outfitted with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon QCS603 SoC with 4Gb of LPDDR4x RAM, and 16Gb of eMMC for storage. It boasts an 8MP camera sensor capable of recording 4K UHD video, a four microphone array for capturing audio, Qualcomm’s WCN3980 (1X1) 802.11b/g/n (2.4/5GHz) Wi-Fi chip, and a micro SD card slot. There’s also audio in/out jacks, an HDMI port, a USB-C port, and a power button, plus it runs Yacto Linux.

According to Microsoft, the Vision AI Developer Kit can be used as a workplace safety monitor that checks to make sure workers are wearing hardhats, or provide inventory management, making sure products are stocked on shelves and in their right locations. The Vision AI Developer Kit is now available for $249.