Part 1: Intro to edge apps

What are edge apps?

Edge apps are programs which read data (ex. sensors, audio, video), process it and then publish information derived from that data.

A basic example of an app is one which reads and publishes a value from a sensor every minute. A more complex example could publish the number of birds in a scene using a deep learning model.

Edge apps are composed of code, dependencies and models which are packaged so they can be scheduled on Waggle nodes. At a high level, the typical app lifecycle is:

Exploring existing edge apps

One of the major goals of Waggle is to provide the science community with a diverse catalog of edge apps to enable the sharing of new research. This catalog is maintained as part of the Edge Code Repository where you can find more background information and links to their source repos.

We encourage users to explore the ECR to get familiar with existing apps as well a references if you develop your own edge app.

Next steps

If this sounds exciting and you'd like to write you own edge app, please continue to part 2!