Role Coral TPU

Role: Coral TPU

Installs the Google Coral Edge TPU drivers and runtime, enabling hardware-accelerated AI inference (used primarily by Frigate NVR for object detection).

What It Does

1. Checks if the Gasket driver is already installed
2. Copies and installs the Gasket driver package (v1.0-18) if missing
3. Adds the Google Coral APT repository
4. Installs libedgetpu1-std (standard clock Edge TPU runtime)

Why?

The Coral TPU is a USB/PCIe accelerator that handles AI object detection at the edge. In my setup it's used by Frigate (running as a Docker container) to do real-time object detection on security camera feeds without hammering the CPU.

Driver Note

The Gasket driver (for PCIe-based Coral devices) is bundled as a .deb file in the role's files/ directory rather than pulled from a repository. This is because:

• The driver is no longer maintained and this copy currently handles newer kernel versions

⚠️ The Coral TPU is effectively end-of-life. Replacing it with a modern Frigate-supported accelerator is on the Roadmap.

Standard vs Maximum Clock

The role installs libedgetpu1-std (standard clock speed). There's also a libedgetpu1-max package that runs the TPU at maximum clock but generates more heat. Standard is sufficient for my workload and keeps thermals manageable.

🔗 Coral getting started | Frigate documentation | Gasket driver