How can I connect a Hailo-8 to a Raspberry Pi 4?

You will need a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 and a base board. The standard Raspberry Pi 4 uses the PCIe interface on board for a USB controller. The Compute Module 4 makes PCIe (1 lane) available on the module connector.

You can use the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 IO Board with a PCIe adapter.


Another option is the Waveshare Mini Base Board. It has a M.2 connector at the bottom.


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Would the purpose for doing this be that the Pi 4 can do H.264 hardware decode?

The Raspberry Pi handles the application logic, including video decoding as well as pre- and post-processing tasks. Neural network inference is offloaded to the Hailo-8 accelerator.

However, this setup has now been streamlined through a collaboration between Raspberry Pi and Hailo, resulting in tighter integration and easier deployment with the introduction of the Raspberry Pi 5 and the AI HAT+.

For more details, see the Raspberry Pi - AI HAT+ documentation.

Yes, but my understanding is that the Pi 5 doesn’t do hardware decoding of H.264. Isn’t that right?

That is what I found as well. The H.264 hardware decoder is only available on the Raspberry Pi 4.