Update pycoral for Python 3.11 and modern versions of Tensorflow

[feranick]

Description

Pycoral is available only with support for Python 3.9. Most distribution now no longer ship with that version, rather either 3.10 or 3.11. So there is factually no version of pycoral available to download. Furthermore, building pycoral from source is not compatible with Python 3.10 or 3.11 (again, not supported) and relies on an ancient version of tensorFlow (2.5.0) to work. While this al points to a lack of maintenance, it would be great to at least update so it can be used with, well, pretty much any modern version of OS.

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Issue Type

Build/Install

Operating System

Linux, Ubuntu, Mac OS

Coral Device

USB Accelerator, M.2 Accelerator A+E, M.2 Accelerator B+M, M.2 Accelerator with dual Edge TPU

Other Devices

Raspberry Pi 3, Rapsberry Pi 4

Programming Language

Other

Relevant Log Output

No response

[tranzmatt]

Has this project been officially abandoned?

[feranick]

There hasn't been any comment, action, or even statement in a very long time. The repos are frozen in time. Such a pity when every chip manufacturer is presenting NPUs as the next big thing, and Google (who pioneered it with the edgeTPU so long ago) decided to drop the ball. To make it worse, no official statement either, and a community that relies/invested on it is left it to its own devices (pun very much intended). And to make it worse, coral.ai still sells these products as fully supported when they are nothing but.

Sad, and infuriating.

[Emojibotbot]

I'm experiencing the same issue on 64 bit Raspberry Pi OS 12.4 running on a Pi 4 which has python 3.11.2. I tried to build pycoral myself and have not managed to make things work yet.

I guess all the layoffs have hit this team pretty hard.

[feranick]

I ended up forking the libedgetpu and bringing it up to date with compatibility to the latest version of TF. This is all I really needed (as I don't use pycoral, but directly access the edgeTPU withtflite_runtime) so I can fully use the edgeTPU. I took a look at pycoral but it seems that a whole lot more work is needed to bringing it up to date.

https://github.com/feranick/libedgetpu

[Emojibotbot]

I ended up forking the libedgetpu and bringing it up to date with compatibility to the latest version of TF. This is all I really needed (as I don't use pycoral, but directly access the edgeTPU withtflite_runtime) so I can fully use the edgeTPU. I took a look at pycoral but it seems that a whole lot more work is needed to bringing it up to date.

https://github.com/feranick/libedgetpu

I was able to install the edgetpu runtime without issues on my rig using instructions here (but not have tried to run it in anyway yet.) What made you need to update?

[feranick]

I was able to install the edgetpu runtime without issues on my rig (but not have tried to run it in anyway yet.) What made you need to update?

That is the point. The provided whl install fine if you have the correct Python environment (see below), but they segfault if you are running tlite_runtime > 2.11.1.

The wheels provided are only available for up to Python 3.9, su pretty useless in any modern Linux release (Raspbian/Debian-bookworm current uses 3.11, ubuntu 22.04 uses 3.10). It may work with "legacy" debian-bullseye which uses Python 3.9.

[feranick]

Plenty of discussion here:

google-coral/edgetpu#812