NAME

       OpenALPR - Automatic License Plate Recognition Library

SYNOPSIS

       Plate detection:  alpr [OPTION...] [IMAGE_PATH]

DESCRIPTION

       OpenALPR is an open source Automatic License Plate Recognition library written in C++. The
       library  analyzes  images  and  identifies  license  plates.  The  output  is   the   text
       representation of any license plate characters found in the image.

       Check out a live online demo here: http://www.openalpr.com/demo.html

       OpenALPR  supports  license plates from the USA as well as number plates from Europe.  The
       library can also be used to  identify  plates  from  other  countries.   By  training  the
       library, the accuracy for these other countries can be increased.

USAGE

          alpr  [-c <country_code>] [--config <config_file>] [-n <topN>] [--seek
                <integer_ms>] [-p <pattern code>] [--clock] [-d] [-j] [--]
                [--version] [-h] <image_file_path>

       Where:

          -c <country_code>,  --country <country_code>
            Country code to identify (either us for USA or eu for Europe).
            Default=us

          --config <config_file>
            Path to the openalpr.conf file

          -n <topN>,  --topn <topN>
            Max number of possible plate numbers to return.  Default=10

          --seek <integer_ms>
            Seek to the specified millisecond in a video file. Default=0

          -p <pattern code>,  --pattern <pattern code>
            Attempt to match the plate number against a plate pattern (e.g., md
            for Maryland, ca for California)

          --clock
            Measure/print the total time to process image and all plates.
            Default=off

          -d,  --detect_region
            Attempt to detect the region of the plate image.  [Experimental]
            Default=off

          -j,  --json
            Output recognition results in JSON format.  Default=off

          --,  --ignore_rest
            Ignores the rest of the labeled arguments following this flag.

          --version
            Displays version information and exits.

          -h,  --help
            Displays usage information and exits.

          <image_file_path>
            Image containing license plates

EXAMPLES

              $ alpr -c eu /source/image.jpg

       This  command will attempt to recognize number plates in the /source/image.jpg image using
       the European-style recognition data.  The config file is not provided on the  CLI,  so  it
       will  use the value in the environment variable 'OPENALPR_CONFIG_FILE' if provided, or the
       default location.

              $ alpr --config /tmp/openalpr.conf /source/image.png

       This command will attempt to recognize number plates in the /source/image.png image  using
       the default USA-style recognition data.  The config file is not provided on the CLI, so it
       will read the configuration data from /tmp/openalpr.conf

              $ alpr -c us *.jpg

       This command will attempt to recognize number plates in all jpeg  images  in  the  current
       directory image using the USA-style recognition data.

              $ alpr -j /source/video.mp4

       This  command  reads  data from an input video (/source/video.mp4) and outputs recognition
       data as JSON.

              $ alpr -j stdin < /source/imagefilelist.txt > /out/recognitionresults.txt

       This command processes a list of image files  provided  in  /source/imagefilelist.txt  and
       writes JSON results to /out/recognitionresults.txt.

              $ alpr webcam

       This command processes video from your webcam.  You can also use /dev/video0, /dev/video1,
       etc.  if you have multiple webcams.

DIAGNOSTICS

       License plate recognition software can never achieve 100% accuracy.  In  cases  where  the
       plate  is  not  recognized  correctly, there is diagnostic information available.  You can
       modify the openalpr.conf file to turn "debug" information on.

       In the [debug] section toggle the various debug options to enabled  by  changing  the  '0'
       value  to  a '1'.  Some of these options will output text to the CLI and others may output
       images to the GUI.

BUGS

       Please report bugs! See the web site at https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr/issues

CREDITS

       OpenALPR is distributed under the GNU Affero General Public License version  3.   See  the
       file LICENSE for details.

       The OpenALPR site is available at: http://www.openalpr.com/.

       We  would  be  delighted  to hear about the creative ways that you are using this program.
       Please contact the mailing-list at openalpr@googlegroups.com.

       This program uses the following libraries:

       *      OpenCV - Computer vision (http://www.opencv.org)

       *      Tesseract - Optical Character Recognition (https://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr)

       *      T-Rex - Regular Expression processing (http://tiny-rex.sourceforge.net)

       *      TinyThread++ - Multi-threaded analysis (http://tinythreadpp.bitsnbites.eu)

       *      TClap - CLI Argument parsing (http://tclap.sourceforge.net)

       *      SimpleINI - INI file configuration (https://github.com/brofield/simpleini)

THANKS

       Special thanks go out to: Stefan  Bauer,  Philippe  Vaucher,  Kristians  Vebers,  and  all
       contributors to the project.

AUTHOR

       OpenALPR   is   written   and  maintained  by  Matthew  Hill  (matthill@openalpr.com)  and
       contributors from the open source community.

       Mailing     lists     for     support     and     development     are     available     at
       https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/openalpr

                                           10 May 2014                                openalpr(1)