Where to start?

[dannieboiz]

I've been lurking the LPR forum for the past week to learn how to do LPR. It's a personl project and to be honest, law enforcement will probably not use my LPR reading and clips as full evidence to catch the suspect. But I'd still like to educately analyze the cars that come in and out of my streets.

Spending a ton of money isn't an option, but for about $150 a camera as I recently learn here the 2mp Dahua starlight can do wonders.

What I gathered is the non-lpr camera doesn't have the "built in software" I suppose this mean it logs all the plates info?

So how is this acheived with non-lpr camera? I'm looking for free software options as the LPR software is too rich for me. I'm seeing 500-1000 which I'll never get ROI on.

I see OpenLPR pop up a lot, I registered for the trial but since I don't have a camera to play with I didn't get to do anything else but log in.

 

[carbonita]

When my home was hit, law enforcement _really_ wanted the plates, and IMHO LPR is good after crimes occur in your neighborhood (to apprehend the buggers). Cold/masked plates are still an option for perps, but can attract unwanted (for criminals) attention. Additional cameras are likely beneficial for faces, but hoodies/gloves/etc are commonplace, so camera placement tends to be different for each use-case. As mentioned in another thread, Google vision appears decent for intermittent use, and OpenCV, OpenLPR are interesting, but I'm not sure I'm up for that size of a new hobby. My approaching ideal system would AI a vehicle, OCR plate (alert if no plate), compare to whitelist of plates (e.g., neighbors cars), if not whitelisted within some confidence interval then alert.

 

[wtimothyholman]

In a nutshell, you need a camera with good enough optics to capture the plate, and preferably two to capture cars going in both directions.

Second, you need a PC with the OpenALPR client software running on it, that is connected to the Internet. An i5 or i7 machine should be adequate for two camera streams.

Third, you need an OpenALPR account. The free account is more than adequate, as long as you don't need to save the license plate data online for more than 48 hours. Log into OpenALPR through the client software on the PC, and then you can configure the camera streams to be sent to the PC for pre-processing. The PC will then send the processed image data to OpenALPR.

There are a lot of additional details involved in the configuration, but that is what is needed at a minimum.

 

[dannieboiz]

thanks for the info... so I got OpenALPR installed, added a random test camera everything is showing up.

Question is does the Camera constantly stream contents to the cloud or is everything being processed locally and only plates info are transmitted to the cloud?

I

 

[wtimothyholman]

thanks for the info... so I got OpenALPR installed, added a random test camera everything is showing up.

Question is does the Camera constantly stream contents to the cloud or is everything being processed locally and only plates info are transmitted to the cloud?

The cameras only stream to your local PC. The PC, in turn, processes the image data and then sends only the information to the cloud that is necessary to determine the license plate number. This saves an enormous amount of bandwidth and data processing by the OpenALPR cloud. Your PC is what is doing all the heavy lifting, so to speak.

 

[FoxCR]

Guys I am also learning about LPR, is there a charge for open lpr? Couldn't find that infor on the site.

 

[whatevah]

Guys I am also learning about LPR, is there a charge for open lpr? Couldn't find that infor on the site.

There is a free trial, then you need to pick one of the following plans. This info is available in your account "Dashboard" (OpenALPR Login) after you create an account and log in.

Free
$0
per camera/month
High-Accuracy ALPR
Any IP Camera
2 Day Data Retention
2 Users
Basic Search
Local Compute & Storage Required


Basic
$39
per camera/month
High-Accuracy ALPR
Any IP Camera
30 Day Data Retention
5 Users
Enhanced Search
Unlimited Alerts
Local Compute & Storage Required
Email & Phone Support

Professional
$79
per camera/month
High-Accuracy ALPR
Axis Camera Agent
60 Day Data Retention
Unlimited Users
Enhanced Search
Unlimited Alerts
Video Clip Playback
Cloud Compute & Storage
Email & Phone Support

 

[FoxCR]

Thanks. yike it get pretty pricey quickly. It is almost better off to get an LRP camera no?