simaaisrc

This plugin reads a given file from the file system and puts it into SiMa memory, so that another SiMa plugins (like process2 or process-cvu) can read it from SiMa memory.

The simaaisrc plugin functions similarly to the filesrc and multifilesrc plugins but offers support for SiMa memory allocation. It is particularly useful for debugging and developing SiMa pipelines. By enabling the simulation of input data, the simaaisrc plugin allows for isolated testing of other plugins, facilitating more efficient development and troubleshooting of new pipeline components.

Properties

Property	Description
location	An absolute path to the file which will be used as an input.
node-name	The name of the plugin being mocked (can be taken from its config.json).
blocksize	Size of the input file in bytes.
delay	Delay before the buffer is pushed to the next plugin, in milliseconds.
mem-target	Type of SiMa memory used for allocation. Possible values are: 0: Allocating into A65 CPU memory; 1: Allocating into EV74 CVU memory; - 2 or 4: Allocating into MLA memory
segments	Forces an element to allocate memory using the segment memory API. See the section below for a detailed explanation.

Usage

! gst-launch-1.0 simaaisrc location=/data/test-001.out mem-target=0 .. !

Assuming you have a pipeline that looks like:

input_image -> decoder -> pre-process[EV74] -> process[MLA] -> post-process[EV74] -> nms[A65] -> output

And there is a need to debug NMS plugin because for some reason it does not provide to you valid output.

For debugging sake it is important to preserve deterministic input, so developer can check NMS plugin work step by step using GDB or any other tool.

To do that, we don’t really need the rest of plugins in the pipeline (like decoder, process-cvu, process2, etc). Instead, we can mock the input by using simaaisrc plugin and simplify pipeline to:

simaaisrc -> nms -> fakesink

Let’s see how it will look like in real world:

• First of all, we need to get the output for the previous plugin (in our case it could be a process-cvu plugin that runs post processing EV graph). To dump the output of it you need to set dump: 1 in post-process.json config file.

• Once you did that - run your pipeline as usual, without any other modifications for few seconds. After that you should be able to see ev-post-process-XXX.out files at /tmp folder on the board.

• Take one file (for example ev-post-process-001.out) and copy to /data. This step is needed, because /tmp is not a persistent storage and after board reboot all data will disappear and you’ll need to get the dumps again. `

• Now you’re ready to start using the simaaisrc plugin:

  gst-launch-1.0 gst-plugin-path=/path/plugins/folder simaaisrc location=/data/ev-post-process-001.out node-name="ev-cnet-postproc" blocksize=786432 delay=1000 mem-target=0 ! fakesink
  

Segment Property

The segment property provides a mechanism to allocate logical parts of contigous buffer with their own unique names instead of allocating the entire buffer. This mechanism is extremely useful when the user wants to debug/troubleshoot the processcvu_new element. This element uses a new Dispatcher API, that requires memory segments as an input. In this scenario, the user can use separate files that correspond to each segment. Let’s take an example:

OpenPose post-process graph pose_postproc requires two tensors that represent HM (Heat Map) and PAF (Partial affinity fields). To do that the user can run the following GStreamer string:

gst-launch-1.0 simaaisrc segments='hm_tensor=/data/hm_tensor_in,paf_tensor=/data/paf_tensor_in' node-name=simaaiprocessmla0 mem-target=1 delay=30 ! 'application/vnd.output-mla' ! simaaiprocesscvu_new name='simaai_postproc' num-buffers=5 config='/data/mem_segments/config_postproc.json' dump_data=true ! 'application/vnd.openpose-postproc' ! fakesink

The new property segments takes a string that is a comma-separated key=value pairs. Key represents a segment name that will be used in downstream element, and value is the path to the file that represents a binary data associated with the given segment.

NOTE: User shall use only one of these two properties: segments or location.

Configuration

This plugin does not need any configuration.