FREE License Plate Recognition with Home Assistant

License Plate Recognition with Home Assistant has been something I could never get to work properly, until now! We take a look at how to run number or license plate recognition for free and integrate it with Home Assistant, so that you can build automations and routines around it.
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[@EverythingSmartHome]

Have you got any plans to integrate this into your automations?!

[@058Jacko]

I have a bigger plan for this! Message me 👍

[@VanNguyen-ls2wq]

May I ask you? Why did the Camera recognize the license plate number, by Image Processing, instead of the installation method, because I am working on a project project related to this part, thank you very much.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Sorry I don't understand the question?

[@davidheron1505]

ESH, 5 months ago you advised 058Jacko that you have bigger plans for this. Are you in a position to expand?

[@easthulk99]

I have not started with the object detection project as your last 2 week video... and now you have this video.... you are amazing. Hats off to you

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Haha hopefully you can get this working too! 😅

[@nicolasraby2967]

Instantly subscribed with notifications! Been looking for videos like these especially with home assistant in the UK. Top man look forward to seeing more!

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Thanks Nicolas, I very much appreciate it, means a lot!

[@nicolasraby2967]

@@EverythingSmartHome just watched all your videos, your on your way to 50k my friend 👍

[@johnwinchester1971]

Hi there, super helpful video, thanks for taking the time to produce this! I found that in the configuration.yaml it was necessary to use "always_save_latest_file" instead of "always_save_latest_jpg" hopefully that can help others!

[@firmbutton6485]

I used OpenALPR on a rpi some years back, it was for opening a gate and worked well after tweaking for uk plates. It is worth revisiting it mate.

[@nielslangkilde9255]

Again a GREAT video tutorial - Setting it up as of now.. Man your awesome..

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Thank you sir, appreciate you commenting!

[@mas921]

now THIS is an awesome home automation idea!

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Thank you!

[@KonradWalsh]

Great find and good simple instructions. I will use it as a concrete car has returned home to compliment person tracking

[@EverythingSmartHome]

That's a good idea, let me know how it goes!

[@MrBongobanger]

Thanks for your video! Good info, good pace.. Subscribed!

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Thanks Leon!!

[@BrandonEngstrom]

Do you have a link for the written article? The link here doesn’t get there, and I cannot find it in your website. Thanks

[@petelens9114]

incredibly useful info, thank you for all your content

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Thanks Pete! Appreciate it!

[@brokenarrow-hh5xg]

I have Blue Iris installed on an external machine. I have the Blue Iris HACS integration installed and use MQTT to get motion alerts from Blue Iris. I have Deepstack running in a container on my Jetson Nano for object detection within Blue Iris. Can this plate recognition be setup within Home Assistant to use the Blue Iris cameras? Thanks! I love the Tech Tutorial Tuesdays!

[@pcnz]

Thanks for the video. Planning to use this with a driveway camera/video doorbell with lock control (Dahua VTO) to trigger an electric driveway gate to open.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Nice, that sounds like fun!

[@narutoscarletXxx]

Nice Video! Just wondering how do I get the motion detection flag from motionEye? Can't seem to find an answer to this :(

[@RConradBane]

Is there an end-to-end solution (whether open source or proprietary) that can analyze your routines and behaviors, then automatically tune the environment to your presence. For example, when it detects your license plate and your smart device connects to the network, it opens the garage and unlocks the main door. If you're by yourself, it turns on lights, environmental controls, etc. according to your routine...i.e., "After Work" turn on the local news and stream the audio to whatever room you're in...or "After Work" fill the bathtub with water that's a certain temp and stream relaxing music. Also, is it possible if the system could query the user if they want those automations to run? Or, have we not gotten there yet at the prosumer level?

[@dsellars]

This is a great video, was able to get it working however when cars reverse out of my garage it picks up the motion and there is no number plate in the shot so it doesn't take the picture on the number plate in the screenshot. Any way around this, possibly maybe adding a delay of a few seconds somwhere? Would like to create an input boolean to show if car is in garage or not.

[@mice3d]

Woo-hoo I got a mention, can't wait to give this a try! Thank you mutch appreciated. I've trialed some deepstack on my pc but want to get a Jetson to go with the my HA nuc, would the Xavier NX be an option? Or is it a completely different beast to the nano?

[@EverythingSmartHome]

The Xavier should work I think but you should do some more research, I haven't test it at all!

[@mice3d]

Not much info available I'll keep looking maybe Nvidia can send you one to trial with all the great work you are doing 😊

[@BauerPowerTech]

very cool video! Thanks for sharing!

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Thanks for watching!

[@Lezcarr]

Hi, have you checked out Blue iris that has an LMPR that works better than this intergration, and does intergrate with home assistant but would love to see a video from you that would show how to use white listed plates as sensor

[@TexSweden]

great idea and project!

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Thank you!

[@nicolasberg57]

HI, very usefull video, everything works fine and I get the attributes populated when a car is detected. My question is , "how can I access the attribute "plate" from this entity to do a "if plate="xxXXXX" then trigger gate open ? Thx

[@tomar5e115]

Eh, in the cloud

[@gcd-vlog]

Excuse me Sir, when I try plate regconition from a rtsp camera stream, the server can not recognize, although I still saw the image received when I call the service. But when I use local JPG image as your tutorial then the server give result number plate. Maybe it relates to stream license of the software

[@skynethell]

Does it matter wqhat platform I use for my camera? I use blue iris and am not sure if it'll work or not.

[@davestringer4866]

got HA running on a PI 4 with reolink 520a is there any way to control an output on the pi

[@Jack-rw9zl]

Cant seem to get the git link to work on home assistant. Keeps returning an error that its an invalid addon

[@jamiehiggs5389]

Hopeing you might still monitor this. Mine set up all good however when the service calls nothing happens shows that I still have the full 2500 count and the website dosent show any uploads either any ideas?

[@058Jacko]

Nice easy video. Does it only pull them values? Could it also pull the make & model?

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Thanks as always! No make and model on this version unfortunately!

[@VanNguyen-ls2wq]

May I ask you? Why did the Camera recognize the license plate number, by Image Processing, instead of the installation method, because I am working on a project project related to this part, thank you very much.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Hello, sorry I don't understand the question?

[@SpookyLurker]

@@EverythingSmartHome Sounds like he's asking how the plate characters were recognized.

[@trusky77]

Thank you very much for the video. It works great for me, but I don't know how to use license plate recognition. I want when image plate recognicer finds 1111-BBB to open a door for me. I don't know how I should put the trigger in HA. Thanks!!

[@knightriderfan1]

did you find this out?

[@trusky77]

@@knightriderfan1 Si, siguiente video lo tienes.

[@TheDiverJim]

I wish I could figure out my blink cameras better integrated. I’d love this

[@EverythingSmartHome]

You can do it Jim! 🤞

[@TheDiverJim]

@@EverythingSmartHome if I do, I’ll hit you up to make a video with my findings to help the rest of the community

[@058Jacko]

Revisited this after working on one of my projects. Is there another method I could use to recognise there's a number plate in the camera feed, take a snapshot and use that image for the processing? Something like the object detection

[@EverythingSmartHome]

I haven't found anything reliable yet other than this one that is free unfortunately

[@058Jacko]

@@EverythingSmartHome thanks. I'm trying DOODs to recognise the car, then that will trigger the reg check.

[@bencoleman42]

@@EverythingSmartHome its a year on so sorry ... but plugging this in with frigate might be a good combo. Waiting for my Coral to test this idea...

[@Lezcarr]

HI I have followed this video as this would be very useful for my farm gate, I have installed and have running motion eye, but I am not getting motion sensor in developer tools, it shows the camera, wonder if you can shed some light on it, I have the tocken, plus this friendly_name: Farm Entrance entity_picture: /api/camera_proxy/camera.farm_entrance?token=dfgfgghghghyh supported_features: 0 Thats all

[@beniffland7310]

The api provides a free stream option. Could this be used?

[@Jacho28]

Try using a jetson nano for an aditional computing by the A.I.

[@hybrispsycho1]

great video and easy instructions however i am getting mixed results ive had 3 different number plates reported and went from sedan to big truck (vauxhall corsa)

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Thanks! That's strange, how is the positioning of your camera?

[@hybrispsycho1]

@@EverythingSmartHome near enough straight on,may be a camera quality issue but hard to tell as i only got it working just before dark when the night vision kicked in and the plates dont show up well in nv. It didnt register it at all going through agentdvr as it dropped in quality so much between agent and HA you cant read the numberplate even in video feed in HA even though you can on the main stream i had to add main stream in config.yaml to get a clearer image and thats what i got the different results from. gonna tinker with it tomorrow, may have to change it from fluent to 1080p to get it to work correctly

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Let me know in the server how it goes, interested!

[@LoopsFroott]

Ok so everything is set up. But you left the most important part out. How do I open my gate when a certain plate is read?

[@woocashdy4972]

Hey - how to use the plate that has been read to some simple automation? E.g. If it has detected license plate XYZ 123456 open gate. Would you be so kind to explain it? P.S. Liked and subscribed to the channel! :) awesome job

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Thanks! Have a look at the template video!

[@jamesahkiam9435]

can you give an example on how i can extract the plate number attribute and make it a sensor.

[@jamesahkiam9435]

Thanks for the template video. Got it working after a day of trial and error.. 😀

[@jeroenbrouwers3976]

@@jamesahkiam9435 can you tell me how? I tried the sensor template from the GitHub link, but as soon as I change the plate number in mine I get a error

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Everything you need is in the template video!

[@jameshendry3571]

James - did you create a sensor for each vehicle or single sensor that puts multiple plates into a single sensor? I've only configured it for a single vehicle as it very unlikely that I'd have more than 1 recognisable plate in my driveway. But interested out of curosity "{{ state_attr('image_processing.platerecognizer_frontdrive_cam', 'vehicles')[0].plate }}"

[@SpookyLurker]

I'm not keen on using external services for recognition - if cameras I'm using detect something, I would rather it not be seen outside my network.

[@mariyahsumayya5562]

How can I send the license plate numbers in notifications to Telegram or Email.

[@psilan1]

How do you create a fake camera entity with a static image?

[@drgnyt7487]

Is there anyway I can see what a car looks like just from the licence plate??

[@EverythingSmartHome]

I'm not sure what you mean sorry?

[@miguelgarcia-vg1fh]

Make a video on smart plugs like sonoff s31

[@BR.]

Nice tutorial! Subscribed :) How do I make motionEye give me a motion detection flag?

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Thanks! It's been a while since I looked at motioneye, I just know you can do it. I think it involved using a webhook - there are tutorials on it if you do a quick search, they don't take long

[@johnadams1976]

pausing video at 'doesn't run locally' !! Local only here! ;-)

[@JohnSmith-jz6qv]

Has anyone got an Annke camera (I91BF) working with this?

[@mindiakhechumashvili5453]

How to use -plate data? e.g. to automate garage door.

[@Pabz2030]

AL/NPR On a $100 rolling shutter, crappy sensor, CCTV camera with a cheap lens. Good luck making it be anything more than a curiosity/experiment

[@lelandclayton5462]

I am hanging my head in shame on this one. I do CCTV for a living and using a standard Camera for LPR use is a bad idea. Getting plate info is the easy part. The hard part is conditions such as Rain, Overcast, Night or direct Sunlight. A typical IR based Camera will wash out instantly from the Tail Lights and dunno about other places but in the States a plate is reflective and the IR will bounce back and you'll only see white. If you really want a LPR you have to pony up the cash. I would recommend the Hikvision DS-2CD4A26FWD-IZHS/P. It's a Low Light 2MP Bullet Camera that is designed for LPR use. Toss in a 128GB Micro SDCard and also setup FTP Server and find a way to get HA to pull the info from either of those two ways and you'll be golden.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Of course, that goes without saying. This is a good alternative for something free that you can use with your existing setup. Everything is always going to come down to your exact environment

[@tseawell90]

hanging your head in shame? Please stop taking yourself so seriously.

[@lelandclayton5462]

Yea, I'm hanging my head in shame when people use the wrong equipment for a application such as a cheap Indoor/Outdoor Camera and think they can get amazing results as an LPR. Maybe I should of quoted "Face Palm!" instead. I take my job and hobby seriously.

[@mrxmry3264]

If there was a reliable local solution I'd think about it. But this is not an option because it's in the cloud.

[@tseawell90]

Honestly is it really that big of an issue?

[@mrxmry3264]

@@tseawell90 I guess that depends on how seriously you take security.

[@tseawell90]

@@mrxmry3264 I understand that but I don't think most home assistant projects require an extreme level of security. Most people seem fine with using ring cloud services etc.

[@mrxmry3264]

@@tseawell90 I'm not most people.

[@tr1ggerh1pp1e]

@@tseawell90 honestly, it could be. Especially if the site happens to be outside internet connectivity, just like the one i'm dealing with....

[@AKKJ420]

No cloud thanks

[@TwanJaarsveld1]

Does anyone else have trouble with starting HACS?

[@EverythingSmartHome]

What do you mean sorry?

[@TwanJaarsveld1]

@@EverythingSmartHome HACS is installed only it won't start, so I can't use it

[@EverythingSmartHome]

I don't understand what you mean by start? HACS isn't a service you start

[@TwanJaarsveld1]

@@EverythingSmartHome sorry I meant can't open the HACS plugin store

[@MattTube]

Single? lol

[@giorgosiotis1557]

he video is very innovative but why are you in a hurry to pronounce it. Thank you

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Thanks! I'm not a very confident speaker I guess! 😅

[@augusto_lisboa]

⚠️ Security breach warning ⚠️ Using license plate recognition is A BIG SECURITY RISK alone, someone with a portable printer and a sheet of paper can "bypass" your first security measure...

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Yep literally mentioned that

[@BradPhillips]

A lot of people that use Home Assistant are either paranoid or government spies. That rock in your garden poses a 1,000X higher security risk to your home than using a license plate recognition software to open your garage doors. Especially if you write the automation correctly.

[@sarelpieterse3545]

I want to use this for my neighbourhood watch. We have 9 Camera's and want to form our own database of residents at un-godly hours. Would the stream service on platerecognizer.com work as well?

[@MrNickRout]

Man that's creepy.