Automated License Plate Detector

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  Detailed View of Ultrasonic Sensor

Inspiration

What inspired us to make this project was the want to learn about vision recognition software and its contribution to our rapidly growing high tech society. This type of software will allow businesses to grow, attend customers in a more intelligent way and grow our economy overall.

What it does

This is an automatic license plate detection and recognition system that converts the license plate picture to text and compares it to a database to see if it finds this customer already in the system. A ultrasonic sensor will sense when a car is coming and signal to the microcontroller when to turn on in order to take the picture of the license plate and then send the image to a server. The reason for this was for cost effective purposes , so the camera doesn't stay on the whole time. If the license plate is matched to a customer in the database then the query is a match and the program will output all the data under that customer in order for an employee to have a better understanding of who has come to visit their facilities.

How we built it

By first researching the exact goals of the challenge we then researched various solutions until we found both a cheap and effective hardware and software solution to the challenge, especially when looking for the right hardware to capture and send images.

Challenges we ran into

Some of the challenges we ran into were learning and setting up the google API as well as working with firestone. Learning a brand new platform and applying it in such short notice was a challenge. Also learning about front end development was another challenge because we are both unfamiliar with it, so we had to do a lot of researching.

Accomplishments that we are proud of

We were able to finish a small basic prototype that actually works! It was exciting seeing the whole project come together.

What I learned

We learned that we needed to take our time throughout the learning process and prioritize that part of the process than finishing the project. Also Google is your friend.

What's next for Automated License Plate Detector

To be able to handle multiple images being taken by the webcam, as well as an app that will ping the user when their is a customer arriving and outputting all the information into the app for them to easily analyze the customer. Also a microcontroller was found for $8 which included a webcam, sensor and wifi module all in one which the code should be implemented to for cheaper options.

Built With

• arduino
• googel-firestone
• google-cloud-vision-api
• python
• ultrasonic-sensor