e-con Systems’ SmarteCAM, a ready to deploy smart AI camera system has now been validated by the AWS Device Qualification Program (DQP) under the AWS IoT Greengrass category. The camera has also been listed in the AWS Partner device catalog.
Before we go ahead and discuss how SmarteCAM works seamlessly with AWS IoT Greengrass, let us first have a quick look at DQP, and understand what it means to become an AWS qualified device.
What is AWS Device Qualification Program (DQP)?
According to Amazon, DQP is a hardware validation program that enables you to submit hardware you qualified for AWS IoT Greengrass, AWS IoT Core, AWS IoT Core for LoRaWAN(R), FreeRTOS, and Amazon Kinesis Video Streams for listing in the AWS Partner Device Catalog. The catalog is a directory that enables AWS customers to easily discover devices qualified by participating AWS Partners and build on their solution expertise.
Why choose an AWS qualified device?
AWS DQP – as explained by AWS – offers certain advantages to partners such as being part of the community, more marketing opportunities, reducing integration friction etc.
e-con Systems’ SmarteCAM is qualified under the AWS IoT Greengrass category. What would this mean to customers, developers, or end users? Using a DQP qualified device like SmarteCAM helps you predominantly in 3 different ways.
- Ease of deployment: It can help you make the rollout of your IoT projects easier. The qualified hardware that works with AWS services helps you build and deliver successful IoT solutions faster and easier. This would mean that you can use SmarteCAM to quickly develop your vision based IoT application for the purposes of smart surveillance, traffic monitoring, crowd monitoring etc.
- Confidence: It simplifies the implementation of your IoT projects by helping you choose a dependable IoT hardware that is qualified to work with AWS. With SmarteCAM’s DQP qualification, you can be absolutely confident to run AWS IoT Greengrass on it to develop any camera based IoT solution.
- Reduced time to market: You can go to market successfully with your IoT device by leveraging and building on the combined IoT expertise of AWS.
What is AWS IOT Greengrass?
Now that we understand what AWS DQP is, and the advantages an AWS qualified device like SmarteCAM offers to product owners and developers, let us learn more about AWS IoT Greengrass.
AWS IoT Greengrass is a software that extends cloud capabilities to local devices. This enables devices to collect and analyze data closer to the source of information, react autonomously to local events, and communicate securely with each other on local networks. Local devices can also communicate securely with AWS IoT Core and export IoT data to the AWS cloud. AWS IoT Greengrass developers can use AWS Lambda functions and prebuilt connectors to create serverless applications that are deployed to devices for local execution.
Below is a representation of how AWS IoT Greengrass extends cloud capabilities to local devices.
The AWS IoT Greengrass qualification allows partners to validate that their devices can run the software and interoperate with other AWS IoT services. This gives OEMs and their customers the confidence that their local edge intelligence devices work seamlessly with AWS IoT Greengrass.
How to operate SmarteCAM with AWS IoT Greengrass?
SmarteCAM is a ready to deploy artificial intelligence camera with powerful AI processing capabilities. It comes with an on-board NVIDIA® Jetson™ TX2 CPU and a 256 core GPU which can perform all image processing and analytics indigenously. It can also analyze data closer to the source in the cloud with the help of AWS IoT Greengrass SDK.
This smart AI camera is ideally suited for running image-based machine learning and deep learning models at the edge making the camera perfect for applications such as smart surveillance, traffic monitoring, parking lot management, crowd monitoring & analysis, smart farming, sports broadcasting etc. These AI based application data will be sent to AWS cloud which makes analysis easy for the customer. The AI smart camera also comes with an option to integrate four other cameras from e-con Systems depending upon the end application and use case.
SmarteCAM with AWS IoT Greengrass Core software offers the following functionalities:
- Deployment and local running of AWS connectors and Lambda functions.
- Processing data streams locally with automatic exports to AWS cloud.
- MQTT messaging over the local network between devices, connectors, and Lambda functions using managed subscriptions.
- MQTT messaging between AWS IoT and devices, connectors, and Lambda functions using managed subscriptions.
- Secure connections between devices and AWS Cloud using device authentication and authorization.
- Local shadow synchronization of devices. Shadows can be configured to sync with AWS cloud.
- Deployment of cloud-trained machine learning models for running local inference.
- Secure, over-the-air (OTA) software updates of user-defined Lambda functions.
- Secure, encrypted storage of local secrets and controlled access by connectors and Lambda functions.
SmarteCAM with AWS IoT Greengrass compatibility helps customers to build and deploy their AI based IoT projects faster and easier.
If you are interested in knowing more about the product, visit the SmarteCAM product page. For any queries around the product or its AWS DQP qualification, please write to camerasolutions@e-consystems.com.
Related articles and resources
- SmarteCAM product page on e-con Systems’ website
- SmarteCAM listing on AWS partner device catalog
- Blog: How to run YOLO object detection on SmarteCAM
- Blog: How to run deep stream applications out of the box on SmarteCAM
Suresh Madhu is the product marketing manager with 16+ years of experience in embedded product design, technical architecture, SOM product design, camera solutions, and product development. He has played an integral part in helping many customers build their products by integrating the right vision technology into them.