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Meter reading from cameras

Reads mechanical meters from the cameras already pointed at them.

Built for a marine operator, Thailand

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The problem

Cameras already watch the meters, but people still read them, or older software misreads them when the camera shakes, glare hits the glass, or a digit is halfway through turning.

How it works

  1. 01

    The camera already on the meter

  2. 02

    Read digits, reject impossible values

  3. 03

    Current reading on screen

  4. 04

    Time-stamped log

  1. 1

    Connects to the existing IP camera stream.

  2. 2

    Crops to the meter's number window and reads the digits about once a second.

  3. 3

    Fixes common look-alike mistakes, such as the letter O read in place of zero.

  4. 4

    Rejects impossible readings, such as a counter going backwards or jumping far ahead.

  5. 5

    Logs each accepted reading with its time and a confidence score, and skips a frame rather than log a wrong number.

What the operator sees

Meter-reading viewer running on a synthetic test image of a mechanical six-digit counter. A red box marks the number window, a zoomed inset of that region sits in the bottom-left corner, and a green banner at the top shows the accepted reading 204621 with its OCR confidence.(opens full size in a new tab)The same viewer on a deliberately corrupted frame of the synthetic test meter, where the counter shows 201621, lower than the previous reading. The orange banner at the top says the value was rejected as implausible and gives the last accepted value, 204621.(opens full size in a new tab)Excerpt of the JSON Lines log written during the same run on the synthetic test video. Each line records the capture time, a source label, the accepted value, the OCR confidence and the raw text, as the counter advances from 204618 to 204621.(opens full size in a new tab)
Screens shown with illustrative data. The meter shown is a synthetic test image; the readings are the real engine's output on it.

What's needed on site

  • The IP cameras already pointed at the meters
  • A PC on the same network (no GPU needed)

Every system is trained on footage from your own site before it goes live.

Want to see it on your line?

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