An Overview of NVIDIA's AI Tools For Developers

Here is a quick overview of the tools NVIDIA offers for Developers!  All of these tools are available through the NVIDIA Developer platform, and joining is free. NVIDIA also offers the Jetson Orin Nano Super Developer kit which I review in the post:  NVIDIA's Jetson Orin Nano Super Developer Kit  

NIM APIs - designed for developers who need to perform AI inference in various scenarios. Notable examples include the Deepfake Image Detection Model by Hive, and the llama-3.2-90b-vision-instruct model by Meta. The following video is an excellent tutorial for getting started with an NVIDIA NIM.

LLMs - NVIDIA provides Large Language Models(LLMs) for tasks such as data generation and classification. These models, including the latest Llama 3.1, are valuable for AI applications like deep reasoning. Customize Generative AI Models for Enterprise Applications with Llama 3.1

Sample uses for LLMs (Transformer Models)

Generative AI Solutions - NVIDIA's Generative AI Solutions offer a comprehensive set of tools for developers. A great starting point is the Full-Stack Generative AI Platform for Developers. This platform provides an overview of NVIDIA's software. hardware, and services for building with Generative AI. Its "full-stack" approach enables developers to complete entire builds using NVIDIA products.

Full-Stack Overview

NVIDIA Documentation Hub - a centralized resource for accessing technical documentation for all NVIDIA products and services.

AI Inference Tools and Technologies - NVIDIA offers tools specifically designed to perform inference, which involves using AI to generate or process data. Three notable tools included in this page are sample applications for Building a Digital Human (Avatar), Designing Molecules, and Data Extraction.

Building a Digital Human Demo

RAPIDS Suite - contains AI Libraries that improve the performance of other open-source tools. It includes support for libraries such as Apache Spark, PyData, Dask, Python, and C++.

Full-Stack Using RAPIDS Libraries

Riva Speech AI SDK - a collection of software development kits (SDKs) useful for speech-related tasks. It offers starter guides for key use cases, including Text-To-Speech, Automatic Speech Recognition, and Neural Machine Translation. A tutorial for getting started with RIVA can be found in the video below.

DeepStream SDK - a tool useful for vision-based AI applications.  It supports tasks such as video encoding, decoding, and rendering, enabling real-time video analysis.

DeepStream SDK

NVIDIA Developer Forums - an excellent resource for developers to ask questions and find answers to technical issues related to NVIDIA's AI tools.

Developer Forums

In conclusion, NVIDIA offers an extensive library of tools for a wide range of AI applications. Many of these tools can be accessed for free through the NVIDIA developer program, making it a valuable resource for developers at any level.  

Black Friday 2024 Deals on Maker Electronics!

Here are some of the deals major online electronic retailers are offering this Black Friday!

Adafruit Industries -15% Off with code acidburn15 Hack the Holidays – Use Code acidburn15 for 15% Off « Adafruit Industries – Makers, hackers, artists, designers and engineers! 

Pololu is offering discounts (up to 50% off!) on many electronic components including Robot Chassis, motors, sensors, and much, much more! Check out the link for all details and a categorized list of all products on sale: Pololu Black Friday Sale 2024.

seeed studio Thanksgiving Sale While Thanksgiving day may be over, the seeed studio 2024 Thanksgiving Sale is happening right now! The sale includes Buy 2 get 1 Free on select products, special offers, and, for 11/29 (Black Friday!) only, a flash sale. Link to entire sale: Exclusive Sale: Up to 90% Off & Buy 2 Get 1 Free & Flash Sale & Pre-Sale Offers

Black Friday Sale on Tindie has many devices from various shops, including wifi adapters, battery testers, and much more!

Arduino Online Shop has plenty of devices on sale, including the Arduino Nano, Arduino Uno, and Nicla.Arduino Online Shop

STMicroelectronics is offering free worldwide shipping through November 30th!  Additionally, select Motor Control Evaluation Boards have discounts with code DV-ASP-BOGO-11 at checkout. eStore - STMicroelectronics - Buy Direct from ST

Raspberry Pi While not a Black Friday deal, the Raspberry Pi Compute Module is now available for $45 from the Raspberry Pi Store. It is a modular version of the Raspberry Pi 5.

2024 Black Friday Sale - BC Robotics Receive free gifts with purchases and save on select items. Additionally, there are door crasher deals.

Parts Express save 12% sitewide with code BLACKFRI24

RobotShop has up to 70% off on select products

JLCPCB:Black Friday 2024 Deals and Coupons- Coupons on PCB orders

Find any other great deals on electronics? Let me know in the comments below!

Arduino Sensor Kit

Arduino and Seeed have released the Arduino Sensor Kit for $23 (USD).  The kit includes 10 modules and sensors including light, sound, air pressure, temperature, an accelerometer, buzzer, button, and a small OLED screen.  The Arduino sensor kit base is an Arduino Shield (daughterboard) so you will need an Arduino UNO or compatible board to use it.  If you buy both from Arduino you can get them bundled for a discounted price ($38.70).  The Arduino Sensor Kit can be purchased directly from Arduino or Seeed and Arduino has developed a step-by-step tutorial to go with it and the Arduino UNO. 

Seed has a very similar all-in-one board, the Seeed Grove Beginner Kit for Arduino ($19.90), which includes an Arduino compatible base board.

Electronics Deals Cyber Monday 2020

Cyber Monday electronics deals are here.  Many of the deals listed in my blog post on Black Friday are still available from Adafruit, Polulu, SparkFun, and Tindie.

1BitSquared has a 15% discount off any piece of hardware with the checkout code BLACKFRIDAY2020 through Midnight (US PST).  They have a few unique development boards and JTAG accessories.  They have hard to find JTAG adapters and cables that are useful for ARM processor debugging.  I have used the Black Magic 0.1in Pin Header JTAG cable for STM32 debugging.  They also have STM32 and FPGA development boards and the Black Magic Probe for ARM Cortex MCUs.

MikroE is having deals until Tuesday December 1st on many products.  This includes 25% off most Click Boards.  These are small accessory boards that use the microBUS socket available on many different development boards including the low cost Microchip Curiosity Development Boards.  MicroBus Click Boards are great for prototyping or general DIY projects.  You can add just about any sensor, analog or digital interface, or communications module you would need.

RobotShop is discounting specific products from 5% to 50% for it's Cyber Monday sale.  Of course this includes robot kits and parts, but you can also find Arduino boards, electronic learning kits, drones and Raspberry Pi development boards.

SparkFun A La Carte Custom Board Designer

SparkFun Electronics is offering a web based custom board design service called SparkFun A La Carte (ALC).  You can choose from a few different microcontrollers that can run Arduino programs.  You also have a choice of I/O, connectors and power options.  Communications options include RFID, WiFi and Bluetooth.  There is a one-time design fee for each board and a per unit cost calculated as you add the components.  You can get a 50% discount on the design fee until 12/31/2020 with the promocode ALCSPARKFUN50. For more information see this ALC post on the SparkFun Blog  

This YouTube video on the custom board designer goes over an example design.

Google Reimagines the Development Board

The ADK 2012 platform is packed with innovation and usable code for Android accessory development.



They advertise that all of the code is open source and with a less restrictive license like BSD so you can include it in your products. Here are the main libraries:

• Bluetooth stack (BSD license) with libraries for RFCOMM, A2DP,L2CAP, SDP
• Multimedia library including an ogg player
• MicroSD SD/SDHC driver with FAT12/RAT16/FAT32
• USB Host stack with Android open accessory protocol implementation

All of this runs on the Atmel SAM3X ARM Cortex-M3 processor with 512kB flash, 100kB RAM, and bluetooth is provide by a Texas Instruments CC2564. There are also sensors for light, proximity, acceleration, magnetism, temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, and other toys like a capacitive slider and buttons, RGB LEDs including the 7 segment display, a transducer speaker, and an NFC tag.

For more info, here is the developer's guide from google Accesory Development Kit 2012 Guide. A little more info about the Arduino IDE (for an ARM processor) it uses on the Arduino blog.

The surprise at the end of the video is that an ADK 2012 was given to each attendee of this talk, and the device is not for sale (yet). If you really want one, try e-bay, currently the best price is an auction at $400 US. If are lucky enough to have one here is the Android app from google play.

Easily Add a Graphical Meter to Your Embedded Sensor Project

Lascar Electronics recently was awarded an Electronic Products 2010 product of the year award for its PanelPilot platform.  PanelPilot is a graphical software development tool to create custom meters.  Lascar also sells a line of compatible LCD displays.  Currently, two models are available, a 2.4" and a 2.8", either can be purchased online for under $100.

The displays can monitor real-time data using interfaces on the back.  One allows direct monitoring of voltage using four screw terminal jacks.  A USB interface to a PC allows programming your custom graphical meter you created with PanelPilot.  I2C and SPI interfaces are available for controlling the meter from an embedded system, although this feature isn't yet supported by the development software.  Even without a serial interface, you could use an analog output from a development board like the Arduino or BeagleBoard.  This would give you an attractive real-time indicator without writing a lot of software or building your own display hardware.

Actel Giving Away Evaluation Kits For Best SmartFusion Designs

The Actel SmartFusion design contest offers winners a free SmartFusion Evaluation Kit.  To enter you will need to answer questions about how you would utilize all of the features of SmartFusion.  These devices combine an FPGA, programmable analog, and an ARM Cortex-M3.   Your answers must describe  your use of the FPGA, choice of algorithms, OS,  network stack, external signals, and external transducers.

New Sample Projects for Microsoft Sensors and Location Platform

Microsoft released sample code for three new projects using the Sensors and Location Platform included in Windows 7.  The projects are Graphing Accelerometer Data in Windows 7, Sensor Video-Capture Solution, and Build Your Own Game Controller.   Each project contains a white paper, and sample firmware, driver and application source.  The game controller project uses the XNA Racing Game Starter Kit and a Parallex BASIC Stamp 2-axis accelerometer board.  The Sensor & Location Platform Team Blog also has a post about the game controller project.