Custom Google Colab notebooks for Udacity’s Deep Learning with PyTorch

Summary

The content provides custom Google Colab notebooks for Udacity’s Deep Learning with PyTorch course to save time and avoid setup issues.

Abstract

When the author started Udacity’s Deep Learning with PyTorch course, they faced difficulties setting up the environment locally. To overcome these challenges, they discovered Google Colab, which offers free access to a GPU K80 and allows notebooks to run for 12 hours. However, adapting Udacity’s notebooks for Colab required some effort, such as installing the appropriate versions of PyTorch and Pillow. To save others from facing the same issues, the author has shared custom notebooks for each lesson in the course, making it easier for users to focus on the exercises without worrying about the setup.

Opinions

The author faced difficulties setting up the environment on their local computer.
Google Colab was discovered as a solution for running the notebooks.
The author highlights the benefits of Google Colab, such as its free access, long running time, and included GPU.
Adapting Udacity’s notebooks for Colab required additional work.
The author decided to share custom notebooks for each lesson to save others time and effort.
The author encourages users to reach out to them on Slack if they encounter any issues with the notebooks.
The author seems passionate about the course and willing to help others by sharing their custom notebooks.

Custom Google Colab notebooks for Udacity’s Deep Learning with PyTorch

When I started this amazing course, I was trying to get running the notebooks on my local computer and I ran into so many issues, mainly:

Dealing with pip or conda

CUDA drivers issues

I spent more than 2 days to get CUDA working and I finally gave up. Then I discovered this amazing Google Colab

It’s free!

You can keep the notebook running for 12 hours

Comes with GPU K80

Did I tell you it’s free?

However, getting the Udacity’s notebooks working on Colab again required some effort. PyTorch needed to be installed, appropriate version of Pillow needed to be installed, required data to downloaded etc. So I started making these custom notebooks and now I am sharing all these so that you don’t have to spend any extra minute setting up Google Colab. You can just import them, get started and focus only on solving the exercise.

Custom Google Colab notebooks for Udacity’s Deep Learning with PyTorch

Lesson 4

Lesson 5

Lesson 6

Lesson 7

Lesson 8

Lesson 9

Final Lab Project