CNN-LSTM error intialized Time Distributed

Question

I am trying to build CNN-LSTM to predicting price but I get an error message when trying to build the model. The error message was

Please initialize 'TimeDistributed layer' with a 'tf.keras.layers.Layer' instance. You passed: <keras.layers.core.Flatten object at 0x7fc70c70f250>

Here is my CNN-LSTM model

model = Sequential()
model.add(TimeDistributed(Conv1D(filters=64, kernel_size=2, activation="relu"), input_shape=(None, n_steps, n_features)))
model.add(TimeDistributed(Conv1D(filters=128, kernel_size=2)))
model.add(TimeDistributed(MaxPooling1D(pool_size=2)))
model.add(TimeDistributed(Flatten()))
model.add(LSTM(100))
model.add(Dense(32))
model.add(Dense(1, activation="relu"))
model.compile(optimizer='Adam', loss='mean_squared_error')

earlyStop = EarlyStopping(monitor='val_loss', mode='min', verbose=1, patience=30)

I have search for the solution here but I couldn't really understand, would be great if could help me. Thank you!

Answer 1

I was able to replicate your issue as shown below

from tensorflow import keras
from tensorflow.keras.models import Sequential
from tensorflow.keras.layers import Dense, Conv1D , MaxPooling1D , LSTM, TimeDistributed
from keras.layers import Flatten
from tensorflow.keras.optimizers import Adam

model = Sequential()
model.add(TimeDistributed(Conv1D(filters=64, kernel_size=2, activation="relu"), input_shape=(None, n_steps, n_features)))
model.add(TimeDistributed(Conv1D(filters=128, kernel_size=2)))
model.add(TimeDistributed(MaxPooling1D(pool_size=2)))
model.add(TimeDistributed(Flatten()))
model.add(LSTM(100))
model.add(Dense(32))
model.add(Dense(1, activation="relu"))
model.compile(optimizer='Adam', loss='mean_squared_error')

Output:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ValueError                                Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-9-11436877029b> in <module>()
     11 model.add(TimeDistributed(Conv1D(filters=128, kernel_size=2)))
     12 model.add(TimeDistributed(MaxPooling1D(pool_size=2)))
---> 13 model.add(TimeDistributed(Flatten()))
     14 model.add(LSTM(100))
     15 model.add(Dense(32))

/usr/local/lib/python3.7/dist-packages/tensorflow/python/keras/layers/wrappers.py in __init__(self, layer, **kwargs)
    125           'Please initialize `TimeDistributed` layer with a '
    126           '`tf.keras.layers.Layer` instance. You passed: {input}'.format(
--> 127               input=layer))
    128     super(TimeDistributed, self).__init__(layer, **kwargs)
    129     self.supports_masking = True

ValueError: Please initialize `TimeDistributed` layer with a `tf.keras.layers.Layer` instance. You passed: <keras.layers.core.Flatten object at 0x7fe9c42d5a50>

Fixed code:

Instead of from keras.layers import Flatten, if you can use from tensorflow.keras.layers import Flatten, will resolve your issue.

from tensorflow import keras
from tensorflow.keras.models import Sequential
from tensorflow.keras.layers import Dense, Conv1D , MaxPooling1D , LSTM, TimeDistributed, Flatten
#from keras.layers import Flatten
from tensorflow.keras.optimizers import Adam

model = Sequential()
model.add(TimeDistributed(Conv1D(filters=64, kernel_size=2, activation="relu"), input_shape=(None, n_steps, n_features)))
model.add(TimeDistributed(Conv1D(filters=128, kernel_size=2)))
model.add(TimeDistributed(MaxPooling1D(pool_size=2)))
model.add(TimeDistributed(Flatten()))
model.add(LSTM(100))
model.add(Dense(32))
model.add(Dense(1, activation="relu"))
model.compile(optimizer='Adam', loss='mean_squared_error')