Edge Impulse is a platform focused on deploying ML models to low-power edge devices and embedded systems. It supports both vision and other models like audio, time-series, and signal processing. Edge Impulse is uniquely good at working withmicrocontrollers and has SDKs for single-board computers and mobile devices.
The design focus on TinyML makes it less suited for high-resource, general-purpose tasks like video processing and running modern, state-of-the-art ML models. It also requires some familiarity with embedded systems. It typically requires custom coding your application logic to run on the embedded board.
Chose Edge Impulse if: you're working on an IoT or wearable device that's not capable of running more powerful models, framework, and logic.
DeepStream is NVIDIA's platform for building highly optimized video processing pipelines accelerated by NVIDIA's hardware, taking full advantage of TensorRT for accelerated inference and CUDA for parallel processing. It targets many of the same business problems as Inference, including monitoring security cameras, smart cities, and industrial IoT.
DeepStream has a reputation for being difficult to use with a steep learning curve. It requires familiarity with NVIDIA tooling and while it is highly configurable, it's also highly complex. It's focused on video processing, without deep integrations with other tooling. DeepStream is not open source; ensure that the license issuitable for your project.
Choose DeepStream if: you're an expert willing to invest a lot of time and effort into optimizing a single project and high throughput is your primary objective.
Inference turns any computer or edge device into a command center for your computer vision projects.