Tensorflow Object Detection API on Windows

Question

Tensorflow recently released their new object detection api Is there any way to run this on windows? The directions apear to be for linux.

Answer 1

Yes, you can run the Tensorflow Object Detection API on Windows. Unfortunately it is a bit tricky and the official documentation does not reflect that appropriately. I used the following procedure:

• Install Tensorflow natively on Windows with Anaconda + CUDA + cuDNN. Note that TF 1.5 is now built against CUDA 9.0, so make sure you download the appropriate versions.

• Then you clone the repository and build the Protobuf files as described in the tutorial, but beware, there is a bug in Windows Protobuf 3.5, so make sure you use version 3.4.

  cd [TF-models]\research
  protoc.exe object_detection/protos/*.proto --python_out=.
  

• Finally, you need to build and install the packages with

  cd [TF-models]\research\slim
  python setup.py install
  cd [TF-models]\research
  python setup.py install
  

  If you get the exception error: could not create 'BUILD': Cannot create a file when that file already exists here, delete the BUILD file inside first, it will be re-created automatically

• And make the built binaries available to your path python path, or simply copy the directories slim and object_detection to your [Anaconda3]/Lib/site-packages directory

To see everything put together, check out our Music Object Detector, which was trained on Windows and Linux.