Find text in picture
Hello,
I have to make a program so that we can control the number of cars on our property and to who the car belongs. The licences are in a private database.
So, when a car is driving thrue the gate, there will be made a picture with a
camera and the program has automaticly find the licenceplate and read the text on the plate. Does any one know if this is possible in VB6??
# 1 Re: Find text in picture
Whether VB or other languages, I don't want to say it is impossible, but it would require some serious work. Some problems to deal with. Shadows and time of day will change the light intensity of the snapshot. Assuming the plate numbers are always the darkest pixels on the plate, those can be extracted fairly easily once you know what part of the picture frame to look at which is another obstacle. The license will most likely not appear 100% horizontal in the picture frame. So, the algorithm required must deal with skews and recognize the angle of the license. This is just thinking off the top of my head and am sure other obstacles may have to be overcome too. Should the pixels be extracted and skewed back to 100% horizontal, then algorithms would be used similar to fax/OCR to read the numbers.
Edited> Complicate matters even more, licenses come in a wide variety of styles & colors when compared against different States and even within the same State. The "font" used on licenses may be different too. If you do make this application, you may want to market it. Which leads to another possibility -- have your company by software that probalby already exists to do this job.
# 2 Re: Find text in picture
The moving car is another obstacle, with bumps, etc. You can easily mask a plate into black and white, and known plates could probably be compared to incoming plates for a quicker id. There was a post on vbf a few years ago by someone doing the same thing.
# 3 Re: Find text in picture
As LaVolpe stated, this would certainly take some doing. However, my first thought on overcoming light issues would be to use infrared, or perhaps UV if the heat of the engine interferes with getting a good clear image of the plate.
Anyway, I'd seriously consider buying the software for this, unless you have a lot of time, patience, and are looking for quite a challenge.
