Hello,
I have no idea if this is doable (hence my posting it in Chit-Chat tather than technical), but I have been reading many threads from teams that do not have access to proper vison hardware.
I also remember that some teams used to use cell phones for vision and just realized that the Pixel6 (not pro) is 599 in the US, in stock, and has a tensor flow optimized processor.
I am pretty sure we do not have time for this to be a real solution, and I do not have the knowledge to rectify the gap between our current Wpilib supported solution and Android OS (to my knowledge WPILib is neither tensor flow optimized (Edit: Axon uses tensor flow light so maybe) nor easily integrated with the Android OS, but I could be wrong about that), but that phone could theoretically be a powerful ML-based vision co-processor that is in stock.
Another hurdle could be disabling the radios (and proving to the inspection crew they will remain that way for the duration of the event).
I believe there was a limit in the maximum price of any single part of $400 which would prevent this,(unless that was removed this year).
But other than that, using a phone does have potential considering that’s what FTC teams do.
If I’m not mistaken, 3847 (?) did an Android-based camera back in 2016. However, whether it’s worth the headache or not I can’t say given how things have changed in 2022.
That thought crossed my mind when I was having issues getting ahold of a Coral Edge TPU We finally got one so I didn’t follow up on what it would take to do.