Bad News on the IMU Prototypes and Quick Fix Risk-Order to Hold Schedule
over 3 years ago – Wed, Sep 23, 2020 at 03:05:29 PM

Happy Tuesday OAK Backers!

Some bad news: 

• We have discovered a critical design issue with our IMU design on OAK-D.  

How we're fixing it:

• We are changing the OAK-D IMU design to correct this problem.
• We have prototyped the change by hacking existing hardware and this does correct the problem.
• We are ordering this modified design in bulk (at our risk) in an effort to meet our target of shipping OAK-D in December.

What this means:

• If all goes well with this fix and risk-order, we will still be on track for shipping OAK-D in December.
• If there is another problem with this risk order, likely shipping for OAK-D will be pushed to February.

We have high confidence that this change will be successful, so that we will still be on track for shipping OAK-D in December.  (Note that OAK-1 is not impacted either way.)

But either way - we will keep everyone posted. 

More details and background on this below:

Problems with the IMU Design - And How We're Fixing Them:  

We have now received our initial OAK-D prototypes that have the IMU (see below).  The bad news (good news later) is the onboard IMU does not work well as designed, and the culprit is the I2C connection.  

We discovered that the way we connected the IMU internal on OAK-D (I2C) results in not being able to hit the update rates that the IMU is capable of.  As a result of not being able to hit full rate, the I2C communication gets backed up, resulting in high latency and worse, high jitter (variation in latency).  

For those who need/want the IMU, the key metrics on the IMU are:

• High update rate
• Low Latency
• Low (or, ideally, no) Jitter

And the I2C connection of the IMU internal to OAK-D results in a low update rate, high latency, and high jitter.  So in other words, the I2C connection of the IMU makes the IMU, well, useless (or close to it) for those who really want to use it.

Theoretically, based on 'datasheet engineering', this I2C connection is plenty fast both on OAK-D and also on the IMU to provide full-rate updates at low latency and jitter.  And we chose I2C (instead of SPI) initially as it allow more free IO on the board for other purposes.  But after pouring a bunch of time trying to get it to work correctly, we discovered that the interaction of the chip-level hardware implementation of I2C prevents getting the needed full update rate/low-latency/low jitter.  And there is no firmware workaround possible (as far as we can find, and we spent a bunch of time on it).

So what are we doing to fix the IMU?

We're changing the design to SPI instead of I2C.  

So we re-did the IMU design in Altium, and one of our engineers quickly prototyped this design IRL (shown below) to verify that we can hit high-update-rate, low-latency/jitter over SPI.

And over SPI, it works great - max update rate of the part, low latency, and low jitter.

And this came connectivity has been implemented on the OAK-D PCB:

How Does this Impact Schedule?

This is not the sort of change we want to be making right now.

But for the IMU to work properly for backers, it is necessary.  So we're doing it.  We could build/ship with the I2C IMU, but for those excited about the IMU, it would be a big let down because of the performance ramifications.  

So in an effort to make a great product - while still hitting our planned December shipping - we are 'risk-ordering' these changed PCBs (risk-ordering means ordering in bulk prior to receiving/testing board prototypes).  So if these changes turn out to be fine (and as above, we have breadboarded them), then we will still hit our shipment target of December 2020.  

And as background, were we to no risk-order these PCBs, and instead wait for prototypes of these design changes to come back, test, and then order, we're looking at shipping in February.  And if these risk-ordered PCBs do have a problem, we would then also be looking at the February timeframe for delivery. 

So fingers-crossed that we didn't miss anything on this design fix.  We'll keep you all posted.  We are also shopping around for quick-turn board-fab + assembly to get test-data back on this board change ASAP.

The Good News and Open Source Hardware Design Files

These board samples also serve as the prototypes for OAK-D-WIFI, and so far everything looks good with these, with the exception of some errata we will correcting on the next prototype order.  

We have also open-sourced the designs HERE.  So folks can start working off of these even before any orders are back.  It is worth noting some errata on the designs, though:

Errata:

• We mixed up the cable-orientation-select on USB3 on these boards, so only USB2 works.  The background here is that USB3 actually has pins to indicate the orientation of the cable (since it's reversible), and a switch is required on-board to switch between the top/bottom connections in the cable.  We got that backwards on this design, so when the USB3C cable is plugged in the 'up' orientation, we select the 'down' pins, and vice-versa.  So USB3 is always guaranteed to connect to nothing on this design.  USB2 connects to the up and down positions simultaneously (since it's slow enough), so it still works.  
• The IMU is connected over I2C, and as above, this needs to be changed to SPI for the IMU to be practically usable.

Community Friday #6: OAK Introduction Video, BackerKit Updates, OAK-D Enclosure Prototype, Course Availability, Community Vote
over 3 years ago – Sat, Sep 12, 2020 at 02:40:39 AM

Welcome, community! It’s Friday again, and we’re doing the Community Friday thing. Albeit, we're a little later than usual. The Pledge Management System locks on September 30th. After Sept 30 if you need to change address information you’ll have to email support and have it done manually - until then you can edit your pledge, add-ons, and shipping information yourself by logging in again.

Community Spotlight: OpenCV AI Kit - An introduction to OAK-1 and OAK-D

This week we want to point out an introduction video to OAK hardware by Ritesh of Augmented Startups. We thought the video was great, and think you will too. 

Pledge Management System Update

Over 72% of backers have completed their survey! Thanks so much to everyone who has used the system, especially those of you who helped us find the handful of bugs that popped up.

We wanted to take a moment to address 2 very common questions that we've received recently.

Will OAK-D-WIFI get a case? We're making every effort possible to create a case for OAK-D-WIFI. We would like one too, and we realize that it's the odd one out at this time.  First and foremost, we're working on cases for the other models which we already promised in our campaign.  We hope to have something for OAK-D-WIFI available closer to the shipping date, but that is TBD. 

The deadline is coming, but some board designs aren't yet finalized. What if the final design doesn't work for my project? We're making good progress with the PoE and Wi-Fi/BT variants of OAK hardware. If for some reason the final design is not usable in your project then please contact us after the deadline and we can change your selection if needed.

I know we mentioned this earlier in our update, but please don't forget that the deadline to fill out the survey is September 30th. A majority of you have filled out the survey, and we thank you for that. We will be sending out a reminder to the remaining backers Tuesday next week. If you didn't receive your survey, or lost the link, you can retrieve it by going here. If you have any questions or issues, please don't hesitate to contact us. There is a Need Help? button on the survey, or you can reach us by email at [email protected]. 

 Another Sneak Peek: OAK-D Aluminum Enclosure Prototype

We've received our prototypes of the OAK-D enclosure and we are extremely happy with the design! In fact, we're so happy with the design and performance that we're ready to move to the tooling stage. We couldn't wait to show you. There may be some minor changes, like adding rubber covers for the screws but that should be it. We want it to be serviceable still and feel that this design best achieves that. 

We will reveal more case designs as they are available, likely within our weekly community updates.

OpenCV Spatial AI Competition Feature Discovery and Requests

Not only did were there a ton of incredible entries to the OpenCV Spatial AI competition but this has given us an opportunity to collaborate and further improve the functionality of DepthAI.

So far we have 11 great requests which came from the competition, and 5 of them are already in PR! Please see the following issue on GitHub for details and to track progress. Just giving this a brief mention here, but we will take a further look at these features in the coming weeks. 

Availability of OAK Course and OpenCV Courses

We thought we'd take the time to address this common question; when will the OAK crash course and OpenCV courses be available? While we understand your excitement, the current plan is to release the free OAK crash course and paid OpenCV courses after the September 30th deadline, once orders are finalized. If you have questions related to the courses, or if you'd like to request early access, then please contact us by email at [email protected].

Community Vote: Who Should We Cover Next Week?

We're back and have chosen 5 projects at random, and you get to vote on who we share more detail about next week. The form we're using is live and can be found here. We'll keep that open until Wednesday morning next week.

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That’s all for this now. We'll see you next week with more information, at least on Friday. Who knows, maybe we'll surprise you with another update between now and then. Thanks!

Community Friday #5: Spotlight on Graph-Based Pose-Landmark SLAM, BackerKit Updates, Model Matrix, Sneak Peek of Aluminum Enclosure for OAK-1
over 3 years ago – Sat, Sep 05, 2020 at 01:40:17 PM

Happy Friday, OAK-heads! This week has been a full one for the team- we launched the BackerKit pledge management site on Tuesday and have been hard at work making sure everyone in the community gets the upgrades and add-ons they wanted. Thanks to everyone who has filled out their survey!

OpenCV Spatial AI Competition Spotlight: The Inverse Project, SLAM for OAK

One of the Phase 1 winners of the Spatial AI Competition sponsored by Intel are a team consisting of Deepak Talwar, Sachin Guruswamy and Seung Won Lee who are working on using Spatial AI to detect indoor Landmarks and enabling Graph-Based Pose-Landmark SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping). They’ve written a great journal entry about their project goal and getting started with OAK, and it includes a sneak peek of point cloud data from an OAK-D!

The project intends to use OAK’s Deep Learning capability and object detection features along with OAK-D’s stereo depth capability to generate an optimized, stitched, indoor map of a space for more robust automated pathfinding for robots and other autonomous vehicles. Best of luck in Phase 2, team!

OAK Model Comparison Matrix

We've seen a little bit of confusion in the comments and emails from you about what exactly each OAK module is capable of. To help solve that we've created this simple product matrix to clearly demonstrate what models of OAK get what features, listed by model number:

 BackerKit Pledge Management System Update 

Since the launch on September 1st over 3700 of you have filled out your pledge survey to choose their pledge options, gone through the add-ons store, and paid your grand total! That’s about 53% of backers, which is awesome. Every completed survey helps us lock-in our manufacturing numbers for the thousands of OAK modules we’ll be shipping in December and March.

Backers who wish to make changes to their pledges, or have other issues with the pledge management system should first check out the updated Frequently Asked Questions section, and then contact BackerKit support directly. For technical questions you can reach the OAK team by emailing [email protected].

Speaking of which, we've added some new options since we first launched- Backers can now choose to delay shipping their whole order until March 2021 or keep their order split between December 2020 (OAK-1, OAK-D) and March 2021 (OAK-1-POE, OAK-D-POE, and OAK-D-WIFI).

We’ll be sending a reminder email to everyone who hasn’t completed their survey early next week. If you still haven’t received your invitation, please visit the survey recovery page where you can get it re-sent.

For a more complete rundown of how OAK shipping works around the world, see our update from Tuesday's launch.

 Sneak Peek: OAK-1 Aluminum Enclosure 

Work on the aluminum enclosure for OAK-1 is going really well so far. We’re not sharing the design of the enclosure just yet, but here’s a sneak peek. One of team captured this detail image while verifying that the camera bump from OAK-1 won’t be interfered with by the glass face in this design prototype.

During the campaign we promised that all OAK-1, OAK-1-POE, OAK-D, and OAK-D-POE will get these new aluminum enclosures. Stay tuned for more details on each of these and some big reveals as things get closer to manufacture.

Progress on Power-over-Ethernet Versions of OAK (Early Prototype)

Autonomous vehicle builders and those working on robotics know that the Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) variants of our OAK-1 and OAK-D modules, unlocked during the campaign, are clutch for OAK API’s RoS support which we've announced previously. They’ve been pretty popular add-ons as well. Great news for fans of PoE is that we’re already at the engineering prototype stage. Pictured above, you'll see an extremely early version we're using to test. We'll have more information about OAK-1-POE and OAK-D-POE, including reveals of their final form factor, in the coming months.

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That's all for this week, folks. We'll keep writing if you keep reading. Have a great weekend, community!

We’ve Sent Invitations to the Pledge Management System! Plus: How OAK Shipping Works Around the World
over 3 years ago – Thu, Sep 03, 2020 at 01:26:51 AM

Happy Tuesday, backers! It’s a big day - we’re launching the Pledge Management System today and invited all *checks notes* 6556 of you! Your invitation has been sent to the email address you used to back the campaign on Kickstarter.

Unfortunately, shipping rates are quite a bit higher than we anticipated. We incorrectly estimated shipping with prices which were too low even in non-pandemic times, but were way too low during the pandemic era. We're sorry about that. Any backer who wants a refund due to shipping increases, or any other reason, will get one. Instead we hope you'll stick with us because there's still a lot of awesome stuff to come.

Shipping & Fulfillment

We’re optimizing our shipping and fulfillment strategy for our backers first. We want you to get what you pledged for as quickly and easily as possible. For most of you, you’ll just click the default choices in the survey and be on your way to the add-ons section, then enter your address and pay your final shipping cost.

Pledge Upgrades: POE or WIFI/Bluetooth

For those of you on the cutting edge who want to get a POE or WIFI/Bluetooth-enabled module as well as a regular OAK-1 or OAK-D with your pledge, you’ll pay $50 for each POE upgrade (OAK-D-WIFI is a free upgrade) and a $20 split shipping fee. This fee ensures that we’ll be able to get both parts of your pledge to you quickly and safely no matter where you are in the world. Both the split shipping fee and your upgrade fee which will be part of the Pledge Upgrades line item in your receipt. Once you’ve answered your pledge questions and selected the OAK models from your pledge, you’ll move to the add-ons.

Backerkit: Add-Ons

The add-ons section is where you’ll find individual and bundle-priced OAK modules and accessories available to purchase in addition to your pledged items. The special backer-only add-on prices are the same ones we quoted a few weeks ago and we've got awesome deals on OpenCV Courses, too.

• To add an OAK-1 is $99. To add an OAK-D is $149. OAK-1 and OAK-D ship December 2020.
•  OAK-1-POE is $149. OAK-D-POE is $199. OAK-D-WIFI is $149. OAK-1-POE, OAK-D-POE, OAK-D-WIFI  ship in March 2021.
• You can add different modules in different quantities at once.
• The Backer-only T-Shirt is $20 
• Backers save almost 30% on OpenCV Courses, including Computer Vision I: Introduction, Computer Vision II: Applications, Deep Learning with PyTorch, and bundles featuring the courses in several combinations or all three at once.

Any items you add here will be grouped with your pledge items based on when they ship- December 2020 for OAK-1 and OAK-D, March 2021 for OAK-1-POE and OAK-D-POE and OAK-D-WIFI. You’ll be charged shipping for all of your items at once. If you have credit left over after you pay for your add-ons and shipping, let us know and we'll send you a refund for the difference.

Tax & Duty

OAK will ship to most locations delivery duty paid (DDP) and backers should not expect to pay any additional customs or duty. We will be collecting tax as part of the checkout process - this is intended to cover the import tax from the country of your shipping location.

Backers in Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, Guam, Kazakhstan, Russia, Tunisia and Uzbekistan will need to arrange for VAT and import taxes individually due to logistics and fulfillment issues importing into those countries.

Digital Items

Digital items, such as OpenCV Courses, will be fulfilled through the email address used for your BackerKit account after your pledge is complete.

How OAK Shipping Works Around The World

The US: US shipping will be calculated by weight from our fulfillment center in Colorado. Backers who choose a POE or WIFI upgrade in addition to regular OAK-1 and OAK-D modules will see a $50 upgrade fee per device for POE, plus a single $20 split shipping fee.

Backers in Colorado will pay sales tax of 2.9%.

US backers have already paid $5 towards shipping. So for example if the total shipping in the US (which is based on weight) is $16, only the $11 remainder will need to be paid.

Mexico and Canada: Backers in Mexico and Canada will pay a total of $30 shipping, $20 of which was already paid during the campaign, plus tax (calculated in the checkout process).

Backers who choose a POE or WIFI upgrade in addition to regular OAK-1 and OAK-D modules will see a $50 upgrade fee per device for POE, plus a single $20 split shipping fee.

European Union and United Kingdom: Backers in The European Union and United Kingdom will pay a total of $25.30 shipping, $20 of which was already paid during the campaign, plus tax (calculated in the checkout process).

Backers who choose a POE or WIFI upgrade in addition to regular OAK-1 and OAK-D modules will see a $50 upgrade per device for POE, plus a single $20 split shipping fee.

Rest of World: Globally backers will pay $36 shipping, $20 of which was already paid during the campaign, plus tax (calculated in the checkout process) for countries that allow us to pay the import tax on backers behalf.

Backers who choose a POE or WIFI upgrade in addition to regular OAK-1 and OAK-D modules will see a $50 upgrade fee per device for POE, plus a single $20 split shipping fee.

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As of this writing over 850 of you have submitted your surveys already! Thank you for your time and attention, friends. If you have questions or concerns, please post a comment or send us an email at [email protected].

Community Friday #4: Spotlight on Project Deepway, A 3D Printable OAK-D Case With A Glass Front, and Big Savings For Backers on OpenCV Courses
over 3 years ago – Fri, Aug 21, 2020 at 05:30:56 PM

Hard to believe it’s been a whole week since the campaign closed! The OAK Team have been working to make the modules you'll receive in December and the software that comes with them as awesome as possible. Welcome back to Community Friday! Let's go!

OpenCV Spatial AI Competition Spotlight: Project Deepway

Being able to navigate rough or unknown terrain autonomously is essential for a lot of human activity- consider just walking to a local park. You may find yourself on grass, uneven or damaged sidewalks, or even in light mud in just a short walk. Project Deepway, by Satinder Singh, is one of several Phase 1 winners of the OpenCV Spatial AI Competition Sponsored by Intel focused on assistive devices for the visually impaired. What makes Deepway unique is it doesn’t just do a great job of detecting paths and obstacles- this wearable actually guides the wearer using a pair of low-power servos to “nudge” them in the right direction, making the wearer much more confident in their movements and helping them on their way.

The project is open source and the code is available on Github. Best of luck in Phase 2, Satinder!

Community Spotlight: A Cool, 3D Printable, Case for OAK-D

Fire up your 3D printers! Even though OAK modules are still a few months away from being in backers hands, the good news is that when they arrive you’ll have plenty of options for freely-available 3D printable cases. The most recent one in our gallery of community-contributed Mechanical Designs  is a OAK-D case from community member Eric Schleicher which features a glass front to protect the lenses on your module. Great work, Eric!

Backers Will Save Big On OpenCV Courses in BackerKit, Get Free GPU Time

We’re planning to launch the OAK pledge management system in BackerKit on September 1st. It’s still a couple weeks away, but we got some cool news we had to share: OAK Backers will get a big 30% Discount on ALL OpenCV Courses and Bundles purchased through the add-on store. This includes Computer Vision I, Computer Vision II, Deep Learning with PyTorch and bundles containing all three.

Buyers of the add-on courses will get access to both C++ and Python versions at no additional fee. That’s not the only good news: Backers who choose the Deep Learning with PyTorch course will also get 100 free hours of GPU time on Microsoft Azure!

Backers will be invited to BackerKit (including the add-on store) starting September 1st, and you don’t have to do anything to get your invitation. It will come automatically. Backers who had payment issues, please make sure you fill out the Late Backer form so we can help you out.

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Feels good to be back with Community Friday! Have a great weekend everybody.