OpenALPR (Scout) Push Notification on all Plates

E

echelonff

n3wb
Oct 10, 2021
12
17
WI
Hi Everyone,
I searched high and low for a solution for this while I was recently getting my OpenALPR (Rekor Scout) setup going. A few things about my setup... I've got the $5 month Rekor Scout plan, with the agent running on my local PC. I have the Gymratz LPR Downloader and Viewer working, and Pushover is giving me alerts. I love the fact that I can get push notifications on vehicles that I want to alert on, but there has been some activity in my neighborhood, on a culdesac with very little traffic, that makes me want to alert on every plate that it sees. I want to quickly be able to review each vehicle that goes past for a little while, and know immediately that I got their plate. Unfortunately, Rekor Scout only gives you 6 known plates to give you SMS alerts for, and the Gymratz viewer, which is AWESOME, by the way, only alerts on known plates.

I noticed that if I logged into the webportal for OpenALPR (www.openalpr.com), the configuration menu has an option to create webhooks. Excellent! But... this sends an HTTP POST to a URL that you provide to their system, every time it makes a capture. The problem was that I didn't have a URL to provide it, without setting up a server, or cloud VM, or something of that nature.

I discovered this wonderful (and easy to use) tool called Pipedream (www.pipedream.com), and with this tool, I was able to generate a workflow with pre-coded steps. I made one that gave me a URL to receive the HTTP POSTs from OpenALPR, sends a message as a push notification in Pushover with the license plate, and then ends. In order to get that working, you need to add your pushover API and user keys. I also inserted a step to email the information just for fun and diagnostics too. Pipedream gives you up to 10,000 invocations for free, which is plenty for what I need. If you get a lot more traffic than I have on my street, you probably don't want this feature anyway. I took the URL from Pipedream and plugged it into the OpenALPR webhook configuration.

I'm hoping that I'll be able to figure out how to add the image to the push notification, but for now it's just the plate. But, the beauty here is that I'm finally getting each and every one of them like I wanted! If anyone knows how to get pushover to include the image and is willing to share with me, I would be grateful for that.

Hopefully this helps someone else that has the same challenge!

Echelonff
 
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Reactions: shawlingo
Thanks for your post, I signed up pipedream for a free account and I was able to send the data to the pipedream endpoint. My goal is to organize the plate data and insert into a google sheet with date & timestamp. I don't code so learning from scratch. The app does work and they made it easy to learn. It's much better than learning python to scrape the data.
 
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Reactions: echelonff
Thank you, I am interested. I just don't have the talent to code. Let me know how to get there. I tried to read into the 53 pages of the Webhook Processor thread and the amount of codes and logs in there looked really intimidating.. :)
 
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Reactions: echelonff
Thanks for providing the link to the tutorial. My brain ceased to work when it saw the command line. I have a windows pc and I don't know Linux nor the languages listed on the GitHub..
 
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Reactions: mlapaglia
Thanks @mlapaglia!! I will try it and let you know. Last night I was able to use the pipedream to get me what I need. I still need to work on converting the timestamp into readable format. Populate some selected OpenAlpr data into a google sheet in case we get hit by the package thieves, spreadsheet will be easier to filter out the car/plate to find the needed data.

1635440869027.png
 
Try this formula for converting Epoch time in Excel:

How to convert between date and Unix timestamp in Excel?

Have you ever confued with conversion between unix timestamp and date in Excel? Do not worry, this tutoral can do a favor for you.
www.extendoffice.com www.extendoffice.com
.

UPDATE: Here's a better way:



To convert the epoch(Unix-Time) to regular time like for the below timestamp

Ex: 1517577336206

First convert the value with the following function like below

=LEFT(A1,10) & "." & RIGHT(A1,3)

The output will be like below

Ex: 1517577336.206

Now Add the formula like below

=(((B1/60)/60)/24)+DATE(1970,1,1)

Now format the cell like below or required format(Custom format)

m/d/yyyy h:mm:ss.000

Now example time comes like

2/2/2018 13:15:36.206

The three zeros are for milliseconds

[Source: Converting unix time into date-time via excel]
 
Last edited:
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Reactions: shawlingo
DLONG2 said:
Try this formula for converting Epoch time in Excel:

How to convert between date and Unix timestamp in Excel?

Have you ever confued with conversion between unix timestamp and date in Excel? Do not worry, this tutoral can do a favor for you.
www.extendoffice.com www.extendoffice.com
.

UPDATE: Here's a better way:



To convert the epoch(Unix-Time) to regular time like for the below timestamp

Ex: 1517577336206

First convert the value with the following function like below

=LEFT(A1,10) & "." & RIGHT(A1,3)

The output will be like below

Ex: 1517577336.206

Now Add the formula like below

=(((B1/60)/60)/24)+DATE(1970,1,1)

Now format the cell like below or required format(Custom format)

m/d/yyyy h:mm:ss.000

Now example time comes like

2/2/2018 13:15:36.206

The three zeros are for milliseconds

[Source: Converting unix time into date-time via excel]
Click to expand...

Thanks! That's awesome! I won't have to learn adding more functions/steps in the pipedream. I combined the formula, converted to Pacific daylight savings time zone and now I got the time.
=>>>> =(((((LEFT(A2,10) & "." & RIGHT(A2,3))-7*60*60)/60)/60)/24)+DATE(1970,1,1)
 
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