GhostOpera406 t1_j0amom9 wrote on December 15, 2022 at 6:50 AM

Reply to comment by Beezlegrunk in Providence to install 60 more license plate cameras by Beezlegrunk

With how cheap solar panels, webcams, and a data plan are nowadays, there's absolutely no reason we can't combine the three to make surveillance cameras that people can put on their own property to track down cop cars and government employees instead.

A raspberry pi in a weather proofed enclosure, powered by a mounted solar panel, with a Coral AI accelerator to allow on-board machine learning. Within a few seconds you'll be able to process license plates and store it in a database. Save on data costs by only transmitting when each license plate was seen as well as a low resolution image of the plate to verify.

I wonder how quick they'd make license plate readers illegal.

degggendorf t1_j0cf3g1 wrote on December 15, 2022 at 5:09 PM

That actually seems to be a thing: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/12/new-open-source-license-plate-reader-software-lets-you-make-your-own-hot-list/

You might not need to even roll your own rasp pi with camera module; you can use an off-the-shelf outdoor camera streaming to a network location and do the processing inside.

It would be much more local network traffic, but only local where it doesn't cost anything. There are cameras with local (I think) AI for vehicle detection, which might be a good-enough improvement...transmit only frames containing vehicles which would be a broader set but still smaller than streaming everything.

Either way, what you're describing sounds like a fun project.