Basic Installation and Configuration

Prerequisites

• Compatible neural compute device (like the Intel® Movidius™ Neural Compute Stick)
• Git
• Development computer with a supported OS:
  • x86-64 with Ubuntu (64 bit) 16.04 Desktop
  • Raspberry Pi 3 with Raspbian Stretch (starting with SDK 1.09.xx)
    • Upgrade Raspbian Jessie to Stretch
  • Other operating environments (with supported OS):
    • Virtual Machine
    • Docker
    • Python virtualenv
  • Internet connection
  • USB camera (optional, needed for some examples)

Installation

To perform the typical installation of the NCSDK, use the following command on your host machine:

git clone -b ncsdk2 http://github.com/Movidius/ncsdk && cd ncsdk && make install

The -b ncsdk2 option checks out the latest version of NCSDK 2 from the ncsdk2 branch. If you omit this option you will install the NCSDK version on the master branch, which is currently NCSDK 1.x.

Important: The installation will only set the PYTHONPATH environment variable for the current user. It will do so by modifying the .bashrc file for that user. To use the NCSDK as another user on the host machine you will need to manually set the PYTHONPATH for that user.

Raspberry Pi Installation

We recommend a 16GB SD card for a full NCSDK installation.

You will likely need to increase the swapfile size on the Raspberry Pi in order to successfully complete NCSDK and/or OpenCV installation. To increase the swapfile size, edit the value of CONF_SWAPSIZE in /etc/dphys-swapfile:

sudo nano /etc/dphys-swapfile

The default value is 100 (MB). We recommend that you change this to 1024 (MB) or greater.

Then restart the swapfile service:

sudo /etc/init.d/dphys-swapfile restart

Proceed with installation as shown above. After you have installed the NCSDK (and optionally OpenCV), you should change the swapfile size back to 100 MB.

Uninstallation

To uninstall the NCSDK, type the following command:

make uninstall