Actions
Forum Thread Details
  • Replies 5 replies
  • Subscribers 32 subscribers
  • Views 483 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Related

challenge: license plate camera

Former Member

Here's a challenge, build a camera that can automatically capture and read license plates. a normal system costs around $20,000. think you could do one cheaper?

  • The police can see if you pay your licence... and bust you if you don't pay

  • in reply to Former Member

    i think he ment where as in the OP use it

     

    well car parks and garages

     

    but i dont think the technology is readily available to civilians at the moment as its a security thing

     

    so info wont be readily available

     

    but id say motion camera poiting at the hight of a licence plate in a direction where cars are defo to enter and exit

  • in reply to Former Member

    The technology itself is reletively simple, the main costs come with the software used for the character recognition. You can create your own system with a small bit of effort (Assuming ideal conditions such as reasonable light levels, facing the camera, not moving, fixed height), but having the software able to recognise plates that could be moving, dirty, only in line of sight for a short period is the challenge. There is one big difference (There could easily be many more...) between commercial systems such as those used by stores (Typically used to enforce time limits on parking) and the systems used by law enforcement, is the software it connects to. Commercial systems only need to log the data, where as the law enforcement systems need to be able to look up that data, something which can be quite complex when you get into it (Either local storage of potentially millions of registrations, or wireless communication with a central database).

     

    The easiest, and quickest version of such a system you could replicate would need something a little more powerful than say a Raspberry Pi. This is mostly down to the demands of video processing. There are of course other parts of the system you might need to implement, but the video is the biggest task.

     

    As for the original question of could it be done cheaper, yes it could, but doing it to a similar standard is difficult. Good luck if you try to build your own to the same standard!