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Show HN: Empirical Eye – Data Collection and Streaming Device for ML+AI
2 points by Empirical 2792 days ago
Hey guys,

Our company has just released a sensor + computer module called the Empirical Eye. It's basically a stereo vision system + on-board embedded CPU+GPU + WiFi (plus some mounting straps).

It's meant to be easily attached to physical machines, to collect and stream data, and enable novel machine learning applications (and one day: control those machines!).

The goal with this device is to bring ML/AI to the physical world. We've made our own "visual quality control" software with the device.

We're doing a device giveaway to developers for feedback and troubleshooting, which will help us refine it. We'd love to send some out to the HN crowd (quantities limited to about 75), and get your feedback and see what you build!

We want to make life easier for running ML experiments and developing new applications. The primary motivation has been the field of robotics, but we see it as a flexible module that can be attached to any number of devices or machines, so feel free to be creative :)

We're looking to do another production run in a month or so, with a cleaner industrial design that'll look a bit more professional. Upon delivery you'll get the device's software API. It's a Linux OS not that different from a Raspberry Pi OS, and we have basic data collection + streaming scripts written in Python for your convenience.

If you're interested, definitely check out the site and sign up for a free device. Let us know what you want to develop, and ideally a quick one-liner describing your background experience.

www.empiricalautomation.com

Happy to answer any questions, cheers!

1 comments

Congrats, this seems like a cool product. Fantastic name. You didn't mention that it has an IMU in it.

One other thing, you should say something about what, if anything, you'll do with the contact information of people who sign up.

Thanks :)

You're right, I forgot to mention it. But it's there! As someone with a background in motion recognition I thought it'd be a great addition, even if the use cases aren't clear yet. Ends up being less than a dollar extra to the BOM.

Regarding contact info - we're just holding onto it in a spreadsheet until our next production run is ready, then we'll e-mail to confirm interest, and then ship out the units to the address.

Pretty much anyone is qualified as long as they are either with some existing organization and have a project idea, or they're a developer/academic and can describe their project briefly. Basically we just don't want to give them out to anyone who doesn't show any intent to use it.