congatec i.MX 8M Plus starter set

congatec’s i.MX 8M Plus starter set for AI-accelerated vision applications contains the entire ecosystem developers need to instantly start designing applications on the basis of the next-generation platform, which offers efficient vision and AI integration.

At the heart of the set is the SMARC 2.1 computer-on-module conga-SMX8-Plus. It features four powerful Arm Cortex-A53 cores, 1x Arm Cortex-M72 controller and the NXP NPU to accelerate deep learning algorithms at the edge, and comes with passive cooling. The 3.5″ carrier board conga-SMC1/SMARC-ARM directly connects the 13 MP Basler dart daA4200-30mci BCON for MIPI camera with an F1.8 f4mm lens via MIPI CSI-2.0 without any additional converter modules. Next to MIPI CSI-2.0, USB and GigE vision cameras are also supported.

On the software side, the company provides a bootable SD card with preconfigured boot loader, Yocto OS image, matching BSPs and processor-optimised Basler embedded vision software enabling immediate AI inference training on the basis of captured images and video sequences.

Typical applications are from automated checkout terminals to building safety, in-vehicle vision for navigation and surveillance systems. Industrial use cases include HMIs with vision-based user identification and gesture-based machine operation as well as vision-supported robotics and industrial quality inspection systems.