January 22, 2020

Object Recognition Face-off

This week we will start a series of tutorials intended to evaluate different frameworks for object detection. Rather than just looking at the various models for implementation, we will consider the entire framework for deployment.

Agenda:

• Intro & Welcome
• Teams for Hudson Alpha Tech Challenge
• Fast.ai Lesson 1 announcement
• Amazon configuration for object detection

Here are the details on the 2020 Hudson Alpha Tech Challenge

For next week – here’s a link to Lesson 1 of the Fast.ai Deep Learning Course.

Steps from tutorial

Don’t forget to set a budget!!! Link

Install AWS CLI in a python virtual environment Instructions

Created a user for the AWS CLI.

Set up the CLI following these instructions

Clone the sample repository from Github

StackFormation information here

Initial thoughts:

I don’t know much about the AWS CloudFormation, but I do know that it’s SLOW. This isn’t some free tier thing – I’m actually paying for this. So far, I’m over an hour into this setup and CloudFormation has failed twice. Both times for valid reason, but the failure/rollback cycle is taking > 20 minutes each. Then you have to delete the stack manually (after you figure out how to do that) which takes several more minutes before you can try the CloudFormation again.