tensorflow-lite-rest-server

Expose tensorflow-lite models via a rest API. Currently object, face & scene detection is supported. Can be hosted on any of the common platforms including RPi, linux desktop, Mac and Windows. A service can be used to have the server run automatically on an RPi.

Setup

In this process we create a virtual environment (venv), then install tensorflow-lite as per these instructions which is platform specific, and finally install the remaining requirements. Note on an RPi (only) it is necessary to system wide install pip3, numpy, pillow.

All instructions for mac:

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip3 install https://dl.google.com/coral/python/tflite_runtime-2.1.0.post1-cp37-cp37m-macosx_10_14_x86_64.whl
pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Models

For convenience a couple of models are included in this repo and used by default. A description of each model is included in its directory. Additional models are available here.

If you want to create custom models, there is the easy way, and the longer but more flexible way. The easy way is to use teachablemachine, which I have done in this repo for the dogs-vs-cats model. The teachablemachine service is limited to image classification but is very straightforward to use. The longer way allows you to use any neural network architecture to produce a tensorflow model, which you then convert to am optimized tflite model. An example of this approach is described in this article, or jump straight to the code.

Usage

Start the tflite-server on port 5000 :

(venv) $ uvicorn tflite-server:app --reload --port 5000 --host 0.0.0.0

Or via Docker:

# Build
docker build -t tensorflow-lite-rest-server .
# Run
docker run -p 5000:5000 tensorflow-lite-rest-server:latest

You can check that the tflite-server is running by visiting http://ip:5000/ from any machine, where ip is the ip address of the host (localhost if querying from the same machine). The docs can be viewed at http://localhost:5000/docs

Post an image to detecting objects via cURL:

curl -X POST "http://localhost:5000/v1/vision/detection" -H  "accept: application/json" -H  "Content-Type: multipart/form-data" -F "[email protected]/people_car.jpg;type=image/jpeg"

Which should return:

{
  "predictions": [
    {
      "confidence": 0.93359375,
      "label": "car",
      "x_max": 619,
      "x_min": 302,
      "y_max": 348,
      "y_min": 120
    },
    {
      "confidence": 0.7890625,
      "label": "person",
      "x_max": 363,
      "x_min": 275,
      "y_max": 323,
      "y_min": 126
    },
.
.
.
'success': True}

An example request using the python requests package is in tests/live-test.py

Add tflite-server as a service

You can run tflite-server as a service, which means tflite-server will automatically start on RPi boot, and can be easily started & stopped. Create the service file in the appropriate location on the RPi using: sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/tflite-server.service

Entering the following (adapted for your tflite-server.py file location and args):

[Unit]
Description=Rest API exposing tensorflow lite models
After=network.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/home/pi/.local/bin/uvicorn tflite-server:app --reload --port 5000 --host 0.0.0.0
WorkingDirectory=/home/pi/github/tensorflow-lite-rest-server
StandardOutput=inherit
StandardError=inherit
Restart=always
User=pi

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Once this file has been created you can to start the service using: sudo systemctl start tflite-server.service

View the status and logs with: sudo systemctl status tflite-server.service

Stop the service with: sudo systemctl stop tflite-server.service

Restart the service with: sudo systemctl restart tflite-server.service

You can have the service auto-start on rpi boot by using: sudo systemctl enable tflite-server.service

You can disable auto-start using: sudo systemctl disable tflite-server.service

Deepstack, Home Assistant & UI

This API can be used as a drop in replacement for deepstack object detection and deepstack face detection (configuring detect_only: True) in Home Assistant. I also created a UI for viewing the predictions of the object detection model here.

FastAPI vs Flask

The master branch is using FastAPI whilst I am also maintaining a Flask branch. FastAPI offers a few nice features like less boilerplate code and auto generated docs. FastAPI is also widely considered to be faster than Flask.

Development

I am developing on a mac/pi4 using VScode, with black formatting & line length 120.

• First time only, create venv: python3.7 -m venv venv
• Activate venv: source venv/bin/activate
• Install the dev requirements: pip3 install -r requirements.txt & pip3 install -r requirements-dev.txt
• Sort requirements: venv/bin/isort tflite-server.py
• Black format: venv/bin/black tflite-server.py