Thanks for keeping the PLATE method available for those using other APIs like PlateRecognizer. And the MEMO method is working for my delivery detections.
Full ALPR Database System for Blue Iris!
- Thread starter algertc
- Start date
Need some help once again please. This time I'm trying to install the mobile app on my android phone using the Chrome browser. I've reviewed the documentation and Youtube video but I can't get past the first step-
How does one "Navigate to the Web App" in the Chrome browser? What's the URL I type in to get there? Thanks all.
Navigate to the Web App in Safari (Or Chrome for Android devices)
Log in with your administrator password and click around a few pages of the application.How does one "Navigate to the Web App" in the Chrome browser? What's the URL I type in to get there? Thanks all.
Same url you use to connect from anything else. IP address of your docker machine with the port as 3000. I realize now that my images may be slightly confusing because of the "alpr.database". That is a local DNS record that I created for my container. Yours will probably be something like 192.168.x.x:3000
Thanks for help. That worked. I was thinking/hoping that the PWA (which I'm obviously not familiar with) could grant access to ALPR Database while I'm not at home. Is that possible?
I've also only ever done it once before. Niche use case and not that well known.
This is a networking question and not something that the app could circumvent. You still need to be able to connect to your docker machine, regardless of how you are accessing it. Same as the Blue Iris app.
For now, you should use a VPN to connect to your home network from the internet. It is 100% a very bad idea to expose the app to the internet. That means in any form (ngrok, reverse proxy, port forward, etc). Don't do any of those.
I have been extremely lax with the security so far. It is on my next-up list of things to improve. Once I get to that, you could expose it to the internet if you really wanted to, although it's still better not to.
If you were to expose it to the internet right now, it's not likely to be a situation where some hacker is going to gain access to your whole network and wreak havoc (certainly still possible though). It would be more like you go to log in and the whole thing is broken or all your plate records are gone. I would give a 50+% chance of all your data getting ruined by some automated vulnerability checker in some foreign country if you were to expose it.
It really isn't an "oh it's probably better not to..." or "it's more principled and better security practice" type situation. It legitimately will get hacked.
So, VPN for now; security hardening and expose at your discretion coming soon.
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The app isn't the thing that would do it.
You want to set up an incoming VPN so you have an encrypted tunnel into your home network using OpenVPN, Tailscale, Wireguard, ZeroTier, etc. You can then use that for accessing Blue Iris, the ALPR DB, etc.
Do NOT do port forwarding.
I suggest reading through other posts on this same topic; here's one:
Thread 'Securing Router' Securing Router
If you still have questions, post a separate thread since it's not related to the database.
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Sounds like good wisdom. Pehaps my solution lies with something like Tailscale if I can get a handle on that.
I'm not suggesting that it's good to expose blue iris, but I would like to share that I have done some penetration testing on UI3, and it does seem to be pretty alright in terms of security against common attacks. I personally have BI on the internet with nginx proxy manager and a cloudflare DNS proxy.
I'm not a security professional, so I'm sure there are ways to take advantage of it that I missed, but I found it robust enough against any non-targeted attacks to expose in that setup. I don't think it's that likely that anyone is having their BI specifically targeted anyways. If your BI is of enough interest to be targeted, you probably need something much more heavy duty...
VPN is the way to go, no doubt about that, but I'm just acknowledging the good security practices from the UI3 developer. I'm sure he spent quite a lot of time trying to ensure it is as secure as possible for all us users.
I'm not a security professional, so I'm sure there are ways to take advantage of it that I missed, but I found it robust enough against any non-targeted attacks to expose in that setup. I don't think it's that likely that anyone is having their BI specifically targeted anyways. If your BI is of enough interest to be targeted, you probably need something much more heavy duty...
VPN is the way to go, no doubt about that, but I'm just acknowledging the good security practices from the UI3 developer. I'm sure he spent quite a lot of time trying to ensure it is as secure as possible for all us users.
Tailscale is easy to use which is nice. I'd look for a youtube tutorial. Wireguard is comparatively way more involved and less intuitive to set up, but is faster.
If you have a Unifi network, ignore all of those options and use the wifiman app from unifi. It has a feature that they call "teleport" which is a VPN. That is what I use for anything residential. It's already set up for you and extremely easy to use.
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As I continue to tweak these great tools, I've run into another issue. I'll call it the sun/shade misread issue. At a certain time of the day (on sunny days), the sun will cast a shadow over half the license plate. In my setup it would appear that CodeProject AI stumbles with this scenario. I was wondering if anyone has a solution for this. I miss a lot of plate reads for a good hour or so during these conditions. Thanks
hopalong
Getting the hang of it
Has anyone else seen this issue? The CPAI reads the plate correctly, and it's burned into the image correctly (see bottom right), but it's taken into the database incorrectly (see top left).
When this happens, CPAI has some tracebacks:
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
18:07:49:License Plate Reader (RKNN): [SyntaxError] : Error during main_loop: Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/app/modules/ALPR-RKNN/bin/ubuntu/python39/venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/codeproject_ai_sdk/module_runner.py", line 576, in main_loop
output = await callbacktask
File "/usr/lib/python3.9/concurrent/futures/thread.py", line 58, in run
result = self.fn(*self.args, **self.kwargs)
File "/app/modules/ALPR-RKNN/ALPR_adapter.py", line 43, in process
result = detect_platenumber(self, self.opts, image)
File "/app/modules/ALPR-RKNN/ALPR.py", line 267, in detect_platenumber
read_plate_chars_PaddleOCR(module_runner, numpy_plate)
File "/app/modules/ALPR-RKNN/ALPR.py", line 447, in read_plate_chars_PaddleOCR
ocr_response = ast.literal_eval(ocr_response)
File "/usr/lib/python3.9/ast.py", line 64, in literal_eval
node_or_string = parse(node_or_string, mode='eval')
File "/usr/lib/python3.9/ast.py", line 50, in parse
return compile(source, filename, mode, flags,
File "", line 1
[, ('NO', 0.206848)]]
^
I can't confirm if the traceback above is for the same error above. I can fix this by shutting down CPAI and restarting it, or sometimes it recovers by itself. Happens every 1000 or so reads? It looks pretty random.
When this happens, CPAI has some tracebacks:
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
18:07:49:License Plate Reader (RKNN): [SyntaxError] : Error during main_loop: Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/app/modules/ALPR-RKNN/bin/ubuntu/python39/venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/codeproject_ai_sdk/module_runner.py", line 576, in main_loop
output = await callbacktask
File "/usr/lib/python3.9/concurrent/futures/thread.py", line 58, in run
result = self.fn(*self.args, **self.kwargs)
File "/app/modules/ALPR-RKNN/ALPR_adapter.py", line 43, in process
result = detect_platenumber(self, self.opts, image)
File "/app/modules/ALPR-RKNN/ALPR.py", line 267, in detect_platenumber
read_plate_chars_PaddleOCR(module_runner, numpy_plate)
File "/app/modules/ALPR-RKNN/ALPR.py", line 447, in read_plate_chars_PaddleOCR
ocr_response = ast.literal_eval(ocr_response)
File "/usr/lib/python3.9/ast.py", line 64, in literal_eval
node_or_string = parse(node_or_string, mode='eval')
File "/usr/lib/python3.9/ast.py", line 50, in parse
return compile(source, filename, mode, flags,
File "", line 1
[, ('NO', 0.206848)]]
^
I can't confirm if the traceback above is for the same error above. I can fix this by shutting down CPAI and restarting it, or sometimes it recovers by itself. Happens every 1000 or so reads? It looks pretty random.
adventuredphoto
n3wb
How in the world do you add tags?
I only have a untagged option, cannot add any tags and cannot select even the untagged option.
Additionally I have the timezone set correctly in the docker-compose.yaml however the time is incorrect on the web interface...
I only have a untagged option, cannot add any tags and cannot select even the untagged option.
Additionally I have the timezone set correctly in the docker-compose.yaml however the time is incorrect on the web interface...
Vettester
Getting comfortable
- Feb 5, 2017
- 930
- 910
Database | Tags | + Add Tag
Did you add the TZ in both the environment and db sections of your docker compose file?
adventuredphoto
n3wb
Thank you for the Tags. Idk how I missed that.
And yes, just recompiled and works. Thank you
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In case someone else runs into this in the future, this was caused by CPAI thinking there is a 2nd plate in the frame. It does not draw the bounding boxes around it, but it does seem to send it over the JSON data. You can confirm this by looking at the CPAI logs by searching for the 2nd plate in the log.