Automatic car plates recognition

[fakej]

Hi,

I know this is not a new idea and it has already been mentioned on this forum couple of times. I'm wondering if anyone is aware of any ongoing activity around this feature. Something I would be really looking for is automatic car plates recognition and producing warning sound if car plates match local database stored in camera. Obviously the intent is to warn against cops in civil car (their car plates in some countries are usually well known). I guess lot of users would be ready to pay extra money for such feature.

 

[CheckYourLights]

I don't know how feasible this idea would be, but I like the sound of it. There are some obvious ways to spot an unmarked police car. (Spot light, Shortie, and Official Municipal plate in the states) I have seen some regular plated spotlight removed cars though.

I also would not mind being able to create my own custom database for bad drivers or some other subset of cars I was interested in as well as well. (Delivery drivers perhaps) Might be able to pull down information from a site like ZapTag, but one that would be a little more in depth, sorted well, and watched over.

 

[kamkar]

Thats what i would like too, but i am affraid those systems ( ANPR ) will remain in the hands of police and bands of brothers like NSA.

But i cant see how hard it could be to make for some one who know ther way around programming.

Allso its worth remembering our wide angle dashcams dont see that far, so there will be Little warning.
I have to admit that even tho i have been all legal for at least a couple of decades i can still spot i cop ( marked or unmarked ) a mile avay

I have been thinking Danish police have ther cars crammed with tech these days, i Wonder if it was possible to detect that stuff remote, they have a allways on connection going så there should be a RF spike some where.

Allso if it Work it should be possible to triangulate all cars in a given town with 4-5-6 fixed listening posts connected via internat, then a app could be sold to ppl to keep track of them.
Danish cops allso have at least 1 encrypted channel for chatter, i Wonder how hard that would be to crack.
Danes tend to operate on lowest common denominator / cheapest stuff they can get, so i cant see it could be that hard, allso i think they allready have lost some radios, witch would only make Things more easy to crack.

Not that i am a bandit anymore, but if ppl have the right to assume i am a criminal, then i have the same rights toward those ppl.

Anyways a Little cloak and dagger never hurt any one, just look how fun the 50-60-70ties where

 

[fakej]

Regarding feasibility I don't know much about that stuff but I like to pretend an expert in football, medicine, politics, economy and IT.
So I googled there is open source openCV library for processing static images and video streams. There is also example code for what we are looking for: https://github.com/MasteringOpenCV/code/tree/master/Chapter5_NumberPlateRecognition
I'm not sure how about required processing power but if $100 cameras have face recognition then I guess it should not be a big issue.
That's the theory, the practice is not my strength.

 

[Sgt_G]

What I know about this wouldn't fill a thimble, but I do believe that the system the police use has a camera hooked up to a laptop that stores the wanted-plates database. Ergo, I don't think you'd be able to have such a thing in a stand-alone camera, and surely not in one that would be any sort of reasonable price range.

 

[sludgeguts]

Over here, unmarked cars are fairly hard to spot.
blue LED strobes generally mounted inside rear head restraints or inside the rear window (so not very visible from outside).
Others are mounted insde wing mirror indicators - no idea how it's done but one LED can show many colours.
Front strobes mounted inside headlight units.
It's not like they even use loads of car aerials either - once upon a tiome, unmarked cars looked like the auto equivalent of a hedgehog.

Had one incident where a car followed me a short while then flew past & pulled in front, completely removing my safety margins with the car ahead.
I hit my horn & held my hand up (WTF are you playing at?) and I got a flash of his rear blues - behind the rear screen as well as inside the reversing lens.
Thankfully, they were watching the car in front of me & using my bus as a shield.
This was one car that was to appear on my YT channel as a loony driver - all over the road, braking & accellerating for no reason...
But the unmarked car pulled him shortly after & since it was unmarked, I didn't think it was fair to show the clip.

 

[fakej]

Multicolor LED - I also don't know how it is done (I don't even know how electricity works ) but this was common and cheap technology 25 years ago even in Poland (communist country at that time).
Regarding recognizing unmarked cop cars - people post their car plates on Internet forums and I think there are maintaned databases of such cars. But this is obviously hard to remember and frankly I dont want to bother reading each car plate (even though they are limited to few types of cars). That's why I think that might be job for the future (hopefuly nearest future) dashcam.
By the way - maybe this is stupid question - I admit I have not done any reassonable research - but is there any dash cam available with open source firmware?

 

[sludgeguts]

(I don't even know how electricity works )

Magic.
The electrickery fairy makes it happen & she gets VERY angry when you take things apart & touch the bare wires - hence the 'shock' - it's nothing to do with touching the bare wires, it's the electrickery fairy giving you a zap off her wand (it's a tazer in disguise)

 

[Dashmellow]

In most ways license plate recognition systems are nothing new or esoteric. It has been around since the mid 1970s. It is basically a form of standard Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software that used to often come bundled with common computer document and film scanners. In some ways, it wouldn't be all that hard for an intrepid software developer or dash cam manufacturer to take open source OCR software and modify it to read license plates instead of text documents. Whether it could be ported and made to work accurately enough within the size and speed limitations of the DSPs in dash cams or perhaps require a dedicated ancillary capture chip of its own would be another story but the OCR technology itself is common. While today's sophisticated high end license plate recognition systems can accurately capture a plate number at 100 miles per hour a dash cam system would not really need to perform at that level.

Free OCR software

Automatic License Plate Recognition

Comparison of optical character recognition software

 

[kamkar]

Well to my knowlege most dashcams are Linux based.
I have not been into codeing stuff since the Z81, and that was only skimming the surface back then.
Same with elektronics, i have a crapload of hardware for tinkering with it but i never used it ( aside for some powersupplies and soldering irons )
Back then it was hard to say no when some one had a expensive oscilloscope or the like for sale for less than 1/100 of the retail prize

 

[Ipol]

Regarding aerials you will find that low profile and covert aerial systems are the norm these days....... Ipol

 

[Allucam]

As mentioned by @Dashmellow , license plate recognition technology has and is available and are being used by law enforcement entities for some time now. Personally knowing many officers and deputies, we have seen firsthand how this system works.


In time, maybe this type of technology can be made smaller to fit a Dash Cam. As these systems cost an arm and a leg, we just don’t know how feasible it would be to have such an option and surmise that this application would be more for law enforcement.


Other technologies that are currently available are…

- LDWS (Lane Departure Warning)

- LKAS (Lane Keeping Assistance System)

- HBA (High Beam Assist)

- FCWS (Forward Collision Warning System)

- TSR (Traffic Sign Recognition)

- TLR (Traffic Light Recognition)

- PD (Pedestrian Detection)

 

[Dashmellow]

As mentioned by @Dashmellow , license plate recognition technology has and is available and are being used by law enforcement entities for some time now. Personally knowing many officers and deputies, we have seen firsthand how this system works.
In time, maybe this type of technology can be made smaller to fit a Dash Cam. As these systems cost an arm and a leg, we just don’t know how feasible it would be to have such an option and surmise that this application would be more for law enforcement.

You make a good point that professional license plate recognition systems cost an arm and a leg but when one stops to think of all the amazing low cost technologies we have all around us that once also cost an arm and a leg it may not be all that much of a stretch. The first electronic calculator I ever used cost over a thousand dollars and was as big as a typewriter but now I can buy a tiny one with even greater capabilities for around a dollar. And of course, the 1080P dash cams we enjoy have amazing performance and features for say, one hundred dollars USD yet early HD video cameras were also in the thousands and they too were much much larger. For not much more money you can have GPS capabilities in that dash cam and again, I remember the first hand-held GPS devices were also in the thousands. Then there's the microSD memory. I've been around long enough that the idea of having 32GB (!) of ultra-fast memory on a chip that small for about 20 dollars just blows my mind! So, having license plate recognition in a dash cam at an affordable price doesn't seem so hard to imagination.

 

[fakej]

I would say what raises costs in present commercial systems are most likely most likely (in significance order): reasonable processing unit, good optics, image recognition software and the fact that this is not a mass product.
In a dash cam I would expect the following options:
-abovementioned openCV library (I don't know how usable is the part for car plates recogniction, but openCV itself is reputable product, so it might be promising), maybe there are better options
-if the processing power of daschcam CPU/DSP is not good enough to process every frame then processing every second/third/fifth/tenth frame in good light conditions could be still satisfactory

 

[kamkar]

hehe yeah i remember my fathers first calculator in "pocket" size, big glowing numbers in green. ( texas brand if i am not mistaking )

I allso remember table calculators with a paper roll on it, heavy enuff to crush a foot if it fell of a table and landed there

I allso remember the first HDD i got, 610 Mb for my amiga 500, and still one of the most expensive single pices of hardware i have spend mony on.

 

[oppconsulting]

allot of city's put them on there parking enforcement cars i have seen a few shows its like 3 cam two front one each side about a sec to recognize the parking or impound cars really nice fun system

it most likely will never be civilian use it gives private info cops dont want available to us

 

[Dashmellow]

it most likely will never be civilian use it gives private info cops dont want available to us

I don't agree. License plate numbers are there for all to see. There is no reason civilians can't record them with an automated system as it is no different than writing the plate number down or capturing images of the plates on a dash cam. Cops can run the plate numbers to access information about the cars and their owners that are registered to those plates but that is something else entirely and is different than the needs and interests of motorists.

 

[oppconsulting]

very true recording is free but the street dept and cops bring up the registration and all that crap thats why as of now general use isnt possible even though it would be easy to separate the two

i dont see the need thats my opinion my dash cam records most and i dont really care unless its a road stop and they shoot or run me over thats the only reason other than accidents i would have use but hey everyone there own

 

[oppconsulting]

Over here, unmarked cars are fairly hard to spot.
blue LED strobes generally mounted inside rear head restraints or inside the rear window (so not very visible from outside).
Others are mounted insde wing mirror indicators - no idea how it's done but one LED can show many colours.
Front strobes mounted inside headlight units.
It's not like they even use loads of car aerials either - once upon a tiome, unmarked cars looked like the auto equivalent of a hedgehog.

Had one incident where a car followed me a short while then flew past & pulled in front, completely removing my safety margins with the car ahead.
I hit my horn & held my hand up (WTF are you playing at?) and I got a flash of his rear blues - behind the rear screen as well as inside the reversing lens.
Thankfully, they were watching the car in front of me & using my bus as a shield.
This was one car that was to appear on my YT channel as a loony driver - all over the road, braking & accellerating for no reason...
But the unmarked car pulled him shortly after & since it was unmarked, I didn't think it was fair to show the clip.

The us used to by law at least my state they had to have marked plates big fights over entrapment

now i see to many to count with regular plates the us no matter how the hide you can pick them easy

one time they were after me for reasons i wont say o these detectives were a riot dressed up not dressed up starring at me

man i pointed them out to wife crap a sec they and 20 friends were sitting on me hey that's not fair where did your friends come from i didnt invite them
our town they like Buick and crap impala my 3.8 blows impalas away

my town is clueless morons as far as hiding now state crap they got mustangs camaro even a bloody corvet and the buggers will egg you on what lmao i got a ticket drag raceing a cop

Texas is the king my parents live in austin you dont know what they drive i saw a beat up pickup down there once no crap they go race cars its a mustang shell but it has roll bar what is that 6 point harness thats one areas chase car

nowadays they are getting harder 200 only cops had deep tint now 2014 everyone does so the state its impossible to tell

 

[kamkar]

I want to be able to detect and store licenceplates, and not least have a alarm when some flagged plate come up, but i have to admit that it will proberly not be a feature in a dashcam any time soon.
But there seem to be off the shelf solutions out there, but i bet they are expensive as the mostly are build on IP cameras, and 2 of those and a laptop to run the software will take up a lot of room in my Little car.

I dont think it need massive ammounts of calculating power to do detection of plates, but it might be more than a dashcam can come up with these days.

I like it and if lotto = win big / then buy and install on house