OpenALPR Tool - Save and Query CSV Exports

[DLONG2]

Hey Wittaj, many thanks for the links to these resources. Esperian doesn't list their prices, but said in an email to me that a support team will be contacting me regarding pricing. These other two resources you found do show their prices, either 20 cents per look up or 10 cents per look up.

Spot-checking on my own needs, yesterday there were 80 plates captured on my quiet suburban street. Of the 80 plates, 23 have no VIN data collected. That's about 700 plates per month which would need to be looked up. That would be $138 per month for one service, and about $70 a month for the cheaper one.

I am wondering if these companies are getting their data from Esperian, and reselling their data within their own API apps they developed.

 

[wittaj]

@DLONG2 - I think you are correct. I believe that Plate Recognizer does the same thing - they use Amazon's Rekognition to read plates, but packaged it in a way to sell to consumers.

So the question is do one of these other "brokers" have an unlimited account with Esperian and we could better negotiate a price with them since we only want limited data?

Thinking out loud, I know that other webhooks tool thread seems like they have got make/model/color based on visuals, but obviously doesn't work at night. I do not know if that is a possibility with what you developed or if we need the more expensive OpenALPR account for that, but I would even be open to just getting the VIN at the night time videos and letting the database fill in as day and night plates are found.

Or if Esperian does get back with a price, I think most of us do not really care about the VIN, we just want make/model and year would be nice.

Have you had a chance to play anymore with the account you set up based on that other site I found?

 

[DLONG2]

Hi wittaj, the Esperian developer guide shows how to use the account's username, password, client ID and client secret in order to acquire an access token. It requires the POSTing of a CURL command. I was looking this AM on how to convert a CURL command into VB.NET, and I am certain others can figure out the coding; I was stumbling on learning the http headers. Once one gets an access token figured out then the rest will be easy for running plate queries. My best guess is their pricing will not be agreeable.

One idea would be to bite the bullet and just pay tech101 a monthly fee for access to his unlimited data he will soon be subscribing to! ;-)

 

[wittaj]

Yeah, a quick search shows there are ways to convert CURL command into VB.NET, but all foreign to me.

[RESOLVED] CURL in VB.net (API)-VBForums

Does anyone have a working sample of CURL to VB.net? I have exhausted every example I can find and all of them return NULL search results. I can run the CURL from a command prompt and it returns everything expected. I just can't find a way to get this to work from VB: This CURL works...

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Solved: Convert cURL to VB.NET | Experts Exchange

Find answers to Convert cURL to VB.NET from the expert community at Experts Exchange

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[RESOLVED] Curl to VB.NET - How to avoid Error 403-VBForums

All, I am having trouble converting this code curl -H "token:<token>" "url" $.ajax({ url:<url>, data:{<data>}, headers:{ token:<token> } }) to this Dim myReq As HttpWebRequest Dim myResp As HttpWebResponse myReq = HttpWebRequest.Create("https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/api/v2/")...

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Yep, we can start the gofundme now for @tech101 LOL

 

[DLONG2]

Foreign to me, too.

Here's the curl to get an access token from the sandbox, based on the user/password/clientID/clientSecret:

curl -X POST

https://sandbox-us-api.experian.com/oauth2/v1/token

\
-H 'Accept: application/json' \
-H 'Content-type: application/json' \
-H 'Grant_type: password' \
-d '{"username": "userQ","password": "passQ","client_id": "idQ","client_secret": "secretQ"}'

Even then, the sandbox will not return any vehicle data for an access token; one has to have a subscription, and their sales team then reveals where to post the curl to.

 

[wittaj]

I tried several different combinations to see if I could guess a way, if possible LOL.

Almost every attempt I get this:

{"fault":{"faultstring":"Raising fault. Fault name : RF.Raise-404-Exception","detail":{"errorcode":"steps.raisefault.RaiseFault"}}}

So another way to go about this is do we have a car dealer on this site with an unlimited account? Maybe we could throw some money their way to offset their fee?

 

[tech101]

Hi wittaj, the Esperian developer guide shows how to use the account's username, password, client ID and client secret in order to acquire an access token. It requires the POSTing of a CURL command. I was looking this AM on how to convert a CURL command into VB.NET, and I am certain others can figure out the coding; I was stumbling on learning the http headers. Once one gets an access token figured out then the rest will be easy for running plate queries. My best guess is their pricing will not be agreeable.

One idea would be to bite the bullet and just pay tech101 a monthly fee for access to his unlimited data he will soon be subscribing to! ;-)

I will happily at-least pay for one month rite now if at-least we know if that works even if that is couple hundred dollar. Once we know it can work then we can all start to pitch in for that one account I also have a friend who I hooked up with this software so I will also ask him By The way thank you to @wittaj and @DLONG2 for this lengthy hours of research to see how we can make the tool work.

 

[wittaj]

And if it works, then we know we can maybe do a bigger push to them to accept anything for a limited return on what we are looking for.

And if it works, we can start a thread titled "Any member here own a car dealership" and see if someone here already has an unlimited account that we could help partially fund their account LOL.

 

[wittaj]

Hey Wittaj, many thanks for the links to these resources. Esperian doesn't list their prices, but said in an email to me that a support team will be contacting me regarding pricing. These other two resources you found do show their prices, either 20 cents per look up or 10 cents per look up.

Spot-checking on my own needs, yesterday there were 80 plates captured on my quiet suburban street. Of the 80 plates, 23 have no VIN data collected. That's about 700 plates per month which would need to be looked up. That would be $138 per month for one service, and about $70 a month for the cheaper one.

I am wondering if these companies are getting their data from Esperian, and reselling their data within their own API apps they developed.

So I did a count today on the number of vehicles that came past me that didn't pull a VIN for a typical day in my dead-end street.

Just as I was shocked how quickly I blew through the 2,500/month Plate Recognizer when I tried that out, I was shocked by this too.

I had 74 instances of a vehicle passing by not in the system. Now I do have an LPR facing each way, so could cut that in half, but still that is a lot.

 

[wittaj]

The reply I received stated that the service I am asking for is not available to individuals, and that their consumer website allows for vehicle history reports.

Well since they don't have a service available to individuals, could they open back up the consumer API then LOL.

 

[wittaj]

No idea if this one can do plates or just VIN, but would this one be worth checking out as it says their API is free for developer use and apparently they make it up on reports, which hopefully extracting make and model doesn't count as a report?

It is a different country but data is data if they have access to autocheck?

Carfax API, Autocheck API, Copart API - vehicle history lookup API

Vehicle history reports from top providers (Carfax, Autocheck, Copart) for the single price API

vini.az

 

[DLONG2]

Hey wittaj, this Azerbaijani website (vini.az) does state that specification reports are free, and that is all we are needing. Hot dog!

 

[wittaj]

Hey wittaj, this Azerbaijani website (vini.az) does state that specification reports are free, and that is all we are needing. Hot dog!

So that site will work? You can key in the plates?

And if so, I guess you are figuring out the code to change?

 

[DLONG2]

So that site will work?

And if so, I guess you are figuring out the code to change?

I sent them a question on whether specification data can be acquired from just a plate. Their contact page stated that they are open to proposals, by the way.

Integrating any non-autocheck process into the public GitHub code you are using would require GymRatz's or another C programmer's work. But I might be able to step in as a last resort, not being well versed in C.

 

[tech101]

haha, Since its free for now.. I am wondering if we can some how leverage it.. What I mean is like run every plate combination possible and create a huge database locally. Even if that means couple of tb of storage I can store it .. Just thinking ahead

 

[wittaj]

So I guess how do we get in contact with @Gymratz - it appears he hasn't been on this site since January?

It looks like that site gets their data from autocheck, so hopefully that capability exists. If so, based on their prices and conversion rates, I bet they would jump on $50/year if we cannot get it for free?

I thought @tech101 had a source that might be able to do what we hope is a simple change to the code? I like the idea of running every plate combination possible LOL.

 

[tech101]

I sent them a question on whether specification data can be acquired from just a plate. Their contact page stated that they are open to proposals, by the way.

Integrating any non-autocheck process into the public GitHub code you are using would require GymRatz's or another C programmer's work. But I might be able to step in as a last resort, not being well versed in C.

@DLONG2 if you like Can we connect with the fiverr programmer. I am working with ? if the plate to vin and then data works out after you inquire.

That way at-least you can check his work since you have knowledge and know how of programming .

I have no issue paying that programmer 100-200 , if this works out.

If that is ok with you so this way we can have gymratz and your brilliant program up to date and work again automatically for us

On other note - I just hope Gymratz is doing well have not seen him in a while hoping he is just busy and not on the forum active for now.

Anyways thank to you both for this. Also Huge Shout Out @wittaj for doing this lengthy research into finding sources...

 

[wittaj]

Thanks - my programming skills are weak, but I have a knack for finding information on the net. If it is available, I can usually find it regardless of how obscure it may be!

I hope this works because you don't realize how much you miss it until it is gone. It is one of the many indicators I use when scrubbing through the data.

 

[tech101]

Yes, Personally I think what this software was able to do was HUGE. We can know what kind of car passed at night just thru a plate... Say then if a neighbors come and goes oh it was some Toyota I use to filter all Toyota down and see what comes back Now, I am also thinking if / when we get this inquiry back see if they can also provide us Color That will be big and then we have to just see if a programmer we find where ever can make the search filters work with color as well .

So this way we can just search say for Red BMW, Black Toyota.. Etc..

 

[wittaj]

Yes, I would absolutely love color to be added! When a neighbor says there was a suspicious white car that came through here, not much I can searching that except for look for low instances of vehicles coming past and then manually looking.

From when I have researched this before, the VIN doesn't include a car color, so that would have to come from some AI to pick up the color.

So there are at least 3 options:

• Use the OpenALPR results to give color during the daytime (which for any vehicle that came by during the day would then populate in this tool at night for color)
• Ability to manually type in color in the tool
• Now with DeepStack integration with Blue Iris, if someone hasn't created a custom model to determine color, train a model and then use an overview camera to pick up the color of the car and have this tool pull that from Blue Iris. This option would of course mean that someone is using Blue Iris.