Hey everyone! 
We’re thrilled to share some big news: our Whisper automatic speech recognition pipeline is now officially available for the community! 
Our Journey So Far
A couple of months back, we gave you a sneak peek at our early work on an ASR pipeline using the Whisper-tiny model on a Raspberry Pi with our Hailo-8/8L AI accelerator. Back then, our main goal was to crank up the performance for real-time applications.
The response from all of you was absolutely incredible! Your enthusiasm truly fueled us to push harder and refine the system even further.Plus, we’ve been experimenting with larger Whisper models to find that sweet spot between accuracy and speed.
What’s New in This Full Release!
After weeks of solid optimization and refinement, we’re finally ready to drop the complete package, packed with some serious improvements:
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Dual Model Support: We’ve gone beyond just Whisper-tiny! You can now also use the Whisper-base model, which has twice the parameters for significantly better accuracy and precision. You get to choose between:
- Whisper-tiny: If you need lightning-fast processing.
- Whisper-base: For those times when you need enhanced accuracy for more demanding tasks.
- Whisper-tiny: If you need lightning-fast processing.
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Streamlit GUI: We built a super intuitive, user-friendly interface that makes getting started a breeze. Seriously, just hit a button and start recording – no complicated setup required!
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Optimized Performance: All the performance tweaks we’ve been working on are baked right in, meaning you’ll get faster processing and even better resource efficiency on your Raspberry Pi + Hailo-8/8L setup.
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Complete Documentation: We’ve put together a comprehensive README with step-by-step instructions.
Ready to Get Started?
This release includes everything you need to dive right in:
- A ready-to-use Streamlit application
- Support for both Whisper models
- Handy compilation scripts for easy setup
- And of course, comprehensive documentation
Both models are currently tuned for English, which should cover most use cases. We’re definitely thinking about adding multi-language support in future updates, so keep that feedback coming!
What’s Next for Us
This whole journey has been amazing, and seeing how excited the community is has truly motivated us. We’re already brainstorming potential improvements and would absolutely love to hear how you’re using the pipeline in your own projects.
Go on, give it a try and let us know what you think! Your feedback is what helps us make these tools even better.
Happy building, everyone! 
As always, if you hit any snags or have suggestions, please don’t hesitate to reach out. The community’s input has been absolutely invaluable in getting us to this point. 