The AI-deck is built around the GAP8 RISC-V multi-core MCU build for AI on the edge purposes. Adding to this a QVGA monocrom camera and a ESP32 WiFi MCU. This all together creates a pretty good platform to develop low power AI on the edge for a drone.

• GAP8 – Ultra low power 8+1 core RISC-V MCU
• Himax HM01B0 – Ultra low power 320×320 greyscale camera.
• 512 Mbit HyperFlash and 64 Mbit HyperRAM
• ESP32 for WiFi and more (NINA-W102)
• 2 x JTAG for GAP8 and ESP32
• Button connected to ESP32 for UART bootloader or other action
• 1 x green LED connected to GAP8
• 1 x green LED connected to ESP32
• 1-wire memory for automatic expansion deck detection
• Designed for mounting over or under the Crazyflie 2.X
• Mechanical specification:
  • Weight: 4.4g
  • Size (WxHxD): 30x52x8mm

Ai-deck Schematics Rev.C

There are two Cortex-M 10pin (2×5, 1.27mm pitch) JTAG interfaces on the AI-deck so that both the GAP8 and the ESP32 can be programmed and debugged easily. To not build too much on the height they are mounted on the edge of the PCB. The GAP8 JTAG is located to the left and the ESP32 JTAG to the right when viewing the board from top. Note that pin-1 is located to the left, marked with a 1 on the bottom side of the board.

The GAP8 SDK has recently added support for OpenOCD and thus many debuggers with a ftdi interface should be usable. We have tested JLink and Olimex ARM-USB-TINY-H with success. The STLink v2 will not work as it can only debug Cortex cores.

Use a 2×5 pin 1.27mm (0.05“) flat cable together with our debug adapter or e.g. adapter such as the Olimex ARM-JTAG-20-10, is needed to connect the debugger and the AI-deck.