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Help Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR)

I only did a bit of research, but I don't think so. I would think that ANPR software isn't available to consumers anyway?
 
Pryomancer said:
I only did a bit of research, but I don't think so. I would think that ANPR software isn't available to consumers anyway?
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I guess that's true.... just fancied the idea of trying it out on an Android phone, that's all. It'd be cool if it can do "almost" anything apart from itself making a cuppa for me! heh!
 
There are plenty of software libraries around that will do ANPR, so in theory someone could create an ANPR app for the Desire. But it's such a nich requirement that it's not that likely to happen.

If you're a programmer with time on your hands, you could do it yourself.
 
Would the phone have enough processing power? Would the camera be good enough quality to work? I'm not sure what is required, but those would be my two big concerns.
 
sic0048 said:
Would the phone have enough processing power? Would the camera be good enough quality to work? I'm not sure what is required, but those would be my two big concerns.
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It definitely would. My first ever computer (a BBC micro) could probably do it. And that ran 500 times slower than the Desire does.
 
It's like the reason you must have a standard don't and spacing. It's not that they can't be read, its that you can't get an instant result from the system if it has to think about it.
 
Intruder said:
LOL FAIL !!!!

Sure it would would its whole 64k of ram
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Yes, it could. Ignoring for a moment making use of its sideways RAM and other virtualisation techniques, you can easily rasterize a decent B&W image of a number plate in far less memory than 64K.

What people sometimes forget is that although the bitmap of a single rivet in a modern high-end game can have a file size larger than the BBC micro's entire memory, clever people can do an awful lot with a little. And in those days they had to. Like squeezing the game Elite and word processors into that small space. As for myself, perhaps not so clever, but I was responsible for a multiple-ROM searchable database of our local neighbourhood of stars. A bit like Google Sky without the polish.
 
mikebell said:
Yes, it could. Ignoring for a moment making use of its sideways RAM and other virtualisation techniques, you can easily rasterize a decent B&W image of a number plate in far less memory than 64K.

What people sometimes forget is that although the bitmap of a single rivet in a modern high-end game can have a file size larger than the BBC micro's entire memory, clever people can do an awful lot with a little. And in those days they had to. Like squeezing the game Elite and word processors into that small space. As for myself, perhaps not so clever, but I was responsible for a multiple-ROM searchable database of our local neighbourhood of stars. A bit like Google Sky without the polish.
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Rubbish... And I was there at day one with home computers (im 39) still have a bbc model a/b and master I know them well
 
Intruder said:
Rubbish... And I was there at day one with home computers (im 39) still have a bbc model a/b and master I know them well
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While you were watching Playschool and playing Killer Gorilla on the BBC Micro, I was developing code and hardware for use with the device. Perhaps you could share with the world your particular and unique knowledge that mysteriously forbids a simple bitmap from being analyzed.

And no weasel excuses like the BBC Micro doesn't have a camera or ethernet port... it didn't have a soundcard either but that didn't stop enthusiasts building their own.
 
mikebell said:
And no weasel excuses like the BBC Micro doesn't have a camera or ethernet port....
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All my beeb's talked to each other and still would no problem, ethernet was not even about then short of us military, arcnet was barely mainstream

EDIT as did my two pets....
 
"a simple bitmap being analyzed" (sic) is an incredibly naive statement. If you knew what you were talking about you would say "a bitmap being simply analyzed" in the context of the old 8 bits. It's not the bitmap - its the computational requirements for the analysis that is the bottleneck for the beeb. What you'd need for this little problem is a serious machine - the speccy
 
Nodders said:
"a simple bitmap being analyzed" (sic) is an incredibly naive statement. If you knew what you were talking about you would say "a bitmap being simply analyzed" in the context of the old 8 bits. It's not the bitmap - its the computational requirements for the analysis that is the bottleneck for the beeb. What you'd need for this little problem is a serious machine - the speccy
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That, my friend, is complete twaddle. Although featuring a humble 2MHz CPU, the BBC Micro was not loaded by the massive bloat that affects modern operating systems.

I incorporated the BBC Micro hardware into various laboratory instruments in the mid-80's that controlled high speed scanning hardware and performed data acquisition, spectral analysis and material composition. For the computational work, I developed a floating point library in machine code that worked brilliantly. So, yes, I do actually know what I am talking about.

As a software engineer of some 30 years standing, I'm highly confident that if I was paid to do a dumb task like simple pattern recognition on this hardware, I wouldn't refuse the work.

Would you have a crack, or just roll over and play dead?

The less said about the Speccy, the better, really!
 
The issue isnt processing the image, it's reading the database for matches which is where the BBC wouldnt be efficient enough.

In-law is an ANPR operative for the local force, and the software specs demand a 1.4ghz processor as a min spec.
 
lol @ this typical internet flame'age...

As far as I can see there are two issues which would bring the bbc to its knees; 1) separating a nice "B&W image" of the plate from a constant video stream, and 2) handling a database with a few million entries.

I'm sure the bbc could OCR the plate details if fed a nice, straight image but that's not anpr as I see it.

ps speccies ruled anyway ;)
 
Exactly. Number plate recognition is pointless without any way of linking it to a database of some sort. All you have is a way of reading something that you can see anyway. The police are the only ones who can use it for a reason.

/thread (mainly to stop pointless arguing)
 
ru' said:
As far as I can see there are two issues which would bring the bbc to its knees; 1) separating a nice "B&W image" of the plate from a constant video stream, and 2) handling a database with a few million entries.

I'm sure the bbc could OCR the plate details if fed a nice, straight image but that's not anpr as I see it.

ps speccies ruled anyway ;)
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You are mixing up Automatic Number Plate Recognition per se with certain applications that make use of ANPR technology.

Police vans have a link to centralised DVLA servers where vehicle records are maintained.

Cameras in MacDonalds car parks do not.
 
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