Small-footprint AI solutions for edge devices β with African flavour
# eZansiEdgeAI πβ‘
**Small-footprint AI solutions for edge devices β with African flavour.**
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## π Vision
eZansiEdgeAI is an initiative to design and deploy **lightweight, containerised AI stacks** that run efficiently on edge devices such as the Raspberry Pi. Our goal is to make AI accessible, portable, and adaptable β without sacrificing performance.
We believe in:
- **Ncane (small)**: Compact models and stacks that fit resource-constrained devices.
- **Shesha (fast)**: Optimised inference for real-time edge applications.
- **Khanya (light)**: Illuminating insights with minimal overhead.
- **Umngcele (edge)**: Bringing intelligence to the edge of networks and communities.
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## π§© Approach
We are building **modular AI stacks** packaged in Linux containers. This allows developers to:
- Develop and train on powerful machines (e.g., Mac mini, Linux workstations).
- Package AI stacks into Docker/Podman containers.
- Deploy seamlessly onto Raspberry Pi or similar edge devices.
- Swap or update stacks easily for different scenarios (vision, speech, anomaly detection, etc.).
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## π οΈ Technology Choices
- **Containerisation**: Docker and Podman (rootless Podman preferred for Pi).
- **Lightweight OS**: DietPi and Armbian are under evaluation for best performance and stability.
- **Hardware Targets**: Raspberry Pi, ARM-based edge devices, Mac mini for development.
- **Scalability**: Multiple curated stacks for different AI concepts, easily pulled and deployed.
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## π Organisation Structure
This GitHub organisation will host multiple repositories, each representing a curated AI stack:
- `vision-stack` ποΈ β Computer vision models for edge devices.
- `speech-stack` ποΈ β Lightweight speech recognition and synthesis.
- `anomaly-stack` π β Edge-based anomaly detection for IoT.
- `utils` π οΈ β Shared utilities, scripts, and deployment helpers.
Future stacks will be added as the community grows.
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## π€ Collaboration
This project was born from conversations betwe β¦