General SPECS question..
Discussion
good.
I wanted to let you know this much:
If you have a plate with a non-perpendicular edge, the image recognition algorithm has a blue fit. Same goes for the first edge of the first character not being to specification.
Square plates do not scan, neither do irregular fonts.
SPECS doesnt not need a reflective plate, unlike GATSO. But if you use metal screws under a yellow plastic cover, any IR readers see this as black.. thus you may represent different letters. While not being seen to do it. This is why plates are supposed to be stuck on these days.
IR surface mount LEDs are also quite interesting.
I wanted to let you know this much:
If you have a plate with a non-perpendicular edge, the image recognition algorithm has a blue fit. Same goes for the first edge of the first character not being to specification.
Square plates do not scan, neither do irregular fonts.
SPECS doesnt not need a reflective plate, unlike GATSO. But if you use metal screws under a yellow plastic cover, any IR readers see this as black.. thus you may represent different letters. While not being seen to do it. This is why plates are supposed to be stuck on these days.
IR surface mount LEDs are also quite interesting.
quote:
This is why plates are supposed to be stuck on these days.
From the DVLA site... www.dvla.gov.uk/faq/faqveh.htm#Reg_no_5
Q26. Are stick-on number plates legal?
No, number plates must meet the British Standard requirements and we are not aware of any self-adhesive number plates that are able to meet these requirements.
Although I may be taking this too literally... maybe it means the Mazda MX-5 and Jag E-Type style stuck on front plate...?
A couple of other interesting points about SPECS. SPECS reads the front number plate because this is the "cleanest" of the two, the rear plate tends to get obscured by dirt more readily hence making it unreadable to the software.
Back in 2000, the New Scientist magazine reported on an impending patent infrigement by the manufacturers of SPECS. A US patent lawyer and inventor, John Moetteli (www.uspatentinfo.com/M4/12john/jmain.html) had successfully filed a patent in the United States for an automated licence plate recognition system - the core function of SPECS. He was also filing for a European patent as well, which would mean anyone wishing to manufacture or use such a system legally in the EU would have to pay him large sums in money in the form of licence fees. If his patent has been successfully filed here then I wonder if our friends at Speedcheck Services and Nottingham City Council owe him big £££? And would patent infrigement invalidate any NIP served as a result of evidence generated by SPECS?
Back in 2000, the New Scientist magazine reported on an impending patent infrigement by the manufacturers of SPECS. A US patent lawyer and inventor, John Moetteli (www.uspatentinfo.com/M4/12john/jmain.html) had successfully filed a patent in the United States for an automated licence plate recognition system - the core function of SPECS. He was also filing for a European patent as well, which would mean anyone wishing to manufacture or use such a system legally in the EU would have to pay him large sums in money in the form of licence fees. If his patent has been successfully filed here then I wonder if our friends at Speedcheck Services and Nottingham City Council owe him big £££? And would patent infrigement invalidate any NIP served as a result of evidence generated by SPECS?
quote:
if SPECS can't recognise your plate then it gets passed to person to work out so you can't get away ....
I'm no authority on SPECS but this doesn't make a great deal of sense. The system measures average speed over two fixed points and is largely automated. Unlike a GATSO, where your speed is already known when the pictures are taken - and therefore human intervention is profitable - I find it hard to believe that they would have one or more individuals continuously monitoring difficult-to-read number plates at both locations on the off-chance that one or two of them might have been speeding.
I saw something on television about SPECS when it was first set up in Nottingham. They said that pictures of cars with unreadable plates would be printed out and dealt with by a human in the same way that normal gatso photos are.
Although thinking about it, BarkingMad may have a point. The SPECS system presumably reads the number plate twice at different locations to calculate the average speed. If it can’t read the plate it can’t tell which car it’s looking at and therefore can’t calculate a speed. I suppose it could be set to print out photos of all cars with unreadable plates, but it would be labour intensive to get somebody to match them all up. Also the person looking at the pictures would probably have to do the speed calculation as well.
Another anti SPECS plate idea:
AFAIK the SPECS cameras are IR sensitive. If you were to construct a number plate in which the material for the black lettering and the white background had the same transparency to IR light but appeared normal to visible light (is this possible?), then put an IR light source behind it, maybe the entire plate would appear bright white to an IR sensitive camera.
Although thinking about it, BarkingMad may have a point. The SPECS system presumably reads the number plate twice at different locations to calculate the average speed. If it can’t read the plate it can’t tell which car it’s looking at and therefore can’t calculate a speed. I suppose it could be set to print out photos of all cars with unreadable plates, but it would be labour intensive to get somebody to match them all up. Also the person looking at the pictures would probably have to do the speed calculation as well.
Another anti SPECS plate idea:
AFAIK the SPECS cameras are IR sensitive. If you were to construct a number plate in which the material for the black lettering and the white background had the same transparency to IR light but appeared normal to visible light (is this possible?), then put an IR light source behind it, maybe the entire plate would appear bright white to an IR sensitive camera.
If they have people read the 'unscannable' plates then the only way I can see around it is with these:
www.tyrekickers.com/Market.html
Look at the number plates at the bottom of the page.
I think this has been on a thread here before......
www.tyrekickers.com/Market.html
Look at the number plates at the bottom of the page.
I think this has been on a thread here before......
quote:
If you were to construct a number plate in which the material for the black lettering and the white background had the same transparency to IR light but appeared normal to visible light (is this possible?), then put an IR light source behind it, maybe the entire plate would appear bright white to an IR sensitive camera.
This approach is feasible at night but the cameras see normally during daylight hours.
However, for night-time use I think that tsteenholdt might be onto something. You can keep it even simpler and it'll be both undetectable and probably legal(-ish since the figures aren't themselves retro-reflective). All that's required is for the figures on the plate to be transparent to infra red but otherwise opaque to visible light, ie they look black. The retro-reflective part of the plate remains unaltered, keeping it looking kosher to the naked eye. You can buy IR filter material for photographic use and, surprise, it appears to be both opaque and black but still allows IR light through.
I guess it's then down to light frequency and the degree of transparency to IR as to whether it would work in practice. Any techies out there care to comment?Hi, i'm new around here but have a couple of things to add...
As mentioned earlier about metal screws showing black then surely you could mount the plate on a steel plate so the whole thing appeared black at night?
When I worked at a sign company 3 years ago we had some new 3M black reflective vinyl which reflected white - white letters on white plate at night.
Coupled with that 'light bending' lens it may be possible to make a plate appear blank day and night.
Ok, where's Al's number.....
As mentioned earlier about metal screws showing black then surely you could mount the plate on a steel plate so the whole thing appeared black at night?
When I worked at a sign company 3 years ago we had some new 3M black reflective vinyl which reflected white - white letters on white plate at night.
Coupled with that 'light bending' lens it may be possible to make a plate appear blank day and night.
Ok, where's Al's number.....
quote:
I was told by someone that if you mounted ir led's on either side of your numberplate it created a white zone so it couldnt be read?
A friend and I did some research into this using some IR LED’s, a number plate and a cheap IR video camera. We couldn’t get it to work as the LED’s just weren’t bright enough to obscure more than a couple of square centimetres of the plate. Considering our camera cost about £40 and was quite low resolution, I think it’s unlikely that a SPECS camera costing £’000’s would be fooled – I'd love to be proved wrong though.
I think an IR spotlight of the type used for filming in the dark may work if mounted next to the number plate, but would be a little obvious. Or perhaps mount “always on” IR lasers next to the plate, with diverging lenses so they produce a conical shaped beam – don’t know if this is possible.
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