USB with Docker on Windows and macOS Now Possible: What You Need to Know

Golioth Updates
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Originally published at: USB with Docker on Windows and macOS Now Possible: What You Need to Know - Golioth

Hardware developers have missed out on the benefits of Docker and similar localized container solutions for one big reason: USB. Today we’re seeing how devices can start to reliably connect from the host system to the container.

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Great article.

While I doubt most would agree with my hardware choice, which is fine; I bought the least expensive M4 Mac Mini to run as a cheap low energy server.

I plan to run Home Assistant and Frigate in docker. However, Frigate does not recommend doing object detection on the CPU. It seems to be common for users to use a Google Coral TPU or an Nvidia GPU. On my current linux server I have an Nvidia gpu. Though ideally on my M4 Mac Mini I would use a Google Coral TPU. The ability to access this USB device from the host machine into docker seems to be the first limiting factor.

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Thanks! I don’t have experience with the Google Coral TPU but I think this would be possible. If it’s a USB device it should Just Work :tm: with USB/IP. However, I’m not sure if there are any performance hits using this route (which could be tested!)

I believe a TPU is a different kind of device from the perspective of Docker. Jeff Geerling has done a bunch of testing that might be helpful: Testing the Coral TPU Accelerator (M.2 or PCIe) in Docker | Jeff Geerling