An interceptor only counts if it can see what it is flying at. In daylight almost any vision board holds a vehicle or aircraft in frame; after dark the same airframe is blind. We publish two AI tracking modules for that job, at 6 TOPS and 3 TOPS — not two grades of one product, but opposite sides of a weight-and-power trade.
Night changes the sensor before it changes the algorithm
A visible-light camera loses most of its usefulness once the target is unlit or silhouetted. The fix is an uncooled thermal core feeding the same board, which is why we publish infrared input on DS071 — thermal versus optical zoom covers that half of the decision.
The thermal switch does not change which spec column matters; it sharpens it. Once the target is a handful of pixels, what decides the lock is minimum trackable target size, not the NPU rating:
- DA063HS locks from
2 × 2px on centroid tracking and8 × 8px on correlation, at a minimum contrast of ≥ 3 %. - DS071 locks from
4 × 4px centroid and10 × 10px correlation, at ≥ 5 % contrast.
Target size scales with the square of pixel count, so on identical optics a board that needs a 4 × 4 box gives up roughly half the range of one that holds a 2 × 2 box. That arithmetic — not the TOPS figure — is the real difference between these two boards at night.
The two boards side by side
| DA063HS | DS071 | |
|---|---|---|
| Processor | Rockchip RK3588S, 8 nm, 8-core to 2.4 GHz | RV1126B AI vision processor |
| NPU | 6 TOPS | 3 TOPS |
| Tracking frame rate | 60 Hz (to 100 Hz, compatible camera) | 30 Hz (to 50 Hz, compatible camera) |
| Min. trackable target | 2 × 2 px centroid / 8 × 8 px correlation | 4 × 4 px centroid / 10 × 10 px correlation |
| Accuracy / speed | ≤ 1 px, ≥ 64 px/frame | ≤ 1 px, ≥ 32 px/frame |
| Simultaneous targets | ≤ 64 | ≤ 32 |
| Recognition | 25 Hz, from 10 × 10 px, 0.616 mAP | 25 Hz, from 20 × 20 px, 0.472 mAP |
| Camera input | 2 × MIPI + USB 3.0 (digital) | Visible-light and infrared, global shutter |
| Mass / size | 24.5 g, 55 × 40 mm | 20.1 g bare board, 43 × 38 mm with connector |
| Power / supply | < 6 W, 12 V DC ± 2 V | < 4 W, 12 V DC ± 2 V |
| Operating / storage | −20 to +60 °C / −20 to +65 °C | −40 to +65 °C / −55 to +75 °C |
| Onboard storage | 32 GB, ≥ 2 h at 4 Mbps | 8 GB, ≥ 1 h at 4 Mbps |
| Output & control | RTSP / UDP / RTMP / HLS, RS422 / RS232 / UDP / TCP | Network + CVBS, OSD overlay, miss-distance output, same control set |
6 TOPS: DA063HS when the mission is many targets
The RK3588S platform is why this board holds sixty-four tracks at once and still recognises what it is tracking from a 10 × 10 px footprint, at a published 0.616 mAP on the VisDrone2019 test set (IoU 0.5) — an open-dataset figure, which is what makes it comparable with a competitor's.
Where it earns its 6 W and 24.5 g: airborne pods, fixed sentry posts, border and coastal sections — any perimeter job where several contacts must stay in frame and the airframe is not mass-limited. The 32 GB onboard memory, roughly two hours at 4 Mbps, is the other reason integrators pick this tier: the footage survives the link. Both boards support secondary development.
3 TOPS: DS071 when every gram is counted
DS071 is the board we put on interceptor-class airframes. At 20.1 g bare board and under 4 W it is a payload decision you can defend on an 800 g aircraft, and −40 to +65 °C operating with −55 to +75 °C storage covers the box it lives in between sorties as well as the flight. The trade is in the table above: half the compute, half the track count, a larger minimum target. Against one fast contact in a narrow field of view that is usually the right trade, because the limiter is optics and airframe energy, not the NPU.
Watch the DS071 holding a drone target on an interceptor airframe:
For the airframe side of that clip, our A71 interceptor is an 800 g, 420 km/h class platform with a 6 TOPS processor onboard; on that aircraft the board's mass is a mission parameter, not a footnote. The counter-drone line has the rest.
What to feed the board
A tracking module is only as good as the picture it is handed. The pairing we specify most often for night work is a 9 mm uncooled core at 50 FPS, 640 × 512 or 384 × 288 detector resolution — a reference for sizing your own optical chain, not a part we sell. Settle two things before choosing the board:
- Output format. DA063HS publishes digital inputs only; DS071 states visible-light and infrared input.
- Pixel budget, not megapixels. Work backwards from lock range, target size and detector pitch, then check the answer against the table.
Mass, mounting and power across the whole set are in the payload compatibility checklist.
How to choose, and what it costs
- Multiple contacts, or recording you must keep? DA063HS — 64 tracks, 32 GB, ≥ 2 h.
- Hand-launched or expendable airframe under 1 kg? DS071 — 20.1 g, < 4 W, cold-soak rated.
- Night or unlit targets? Settle the thermal core first, then check its output format against the board's inputs before comparing TOPS.
- Long dwell on a very small target? The 2 × 2 px centroid floor on DA063HS is the deciding number.
- Ground software already written? Both expose RTSP/UDP/RTMP/HLS and RS422/RS232/UDP/TCP, so the switch is mechanical rather than architectural.
Both list at sample pricing — DA063HS at $1,400, DS071 at $969 — with bulk pricing on request, since installed cost depends on how many airframes you are fitting. Send the camera interface, the range at which you must lock, the mass you can carry and the destination country, and the enquiry comes back naming one board rather than both. Export authorisation and import legality in the destination country remain the buyer's responsibility; we supply the documentation you need to file them.