Really cool project though. Now I want to start playing with OpenCV. I wish i had something more constructive to add :/
I've thought about a platform that collects speeds of vehicles and then publishes a database of speeds matched to license plates as an open data set. Police would likely not touch it, but a large enough database might be a tantalizing prize for automobile insurance companies. And then my desire for more disincentives for speeding runs afoul of my feelings about dragnet surveillance, and so I abandon it.
In terms of having the potential to effect direct action against speeders, I don't know how effective simply monitoring speeds would be. That said, some cities (such as Seattle) will lend speed profiling equipment to community groups in order to establish whether or not a given segment of road might be a candidate for traffic calming: http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/ntcp_calming.htm
https://github.com/pfr/VideoSpeedTracker
A more detailed overview of how it works:
https://github.com/pfr/VideoSpeedTracker/blob/master/docs/Vi...
Maybe a "Linux Speed Measurer" however that starts to sound like it's related to measuring the speed of your OS.
Maybe "Linux-based External Object Speed Measurer"
If you want to get them to slow down, buy a radar gun off ebay and put it on some kind of timer to randomly turn it on and off a few times per minute, pointed at your street.
Someone please educate someone. Please. lol
edit: I meant parking spaces outside of my apartment.
Now, learn to code it.
The main problems to solve that I see are; 1- does not actually detect a vehicle, just motion 2- can only detect motion for one vehicle at a time 3- so now you know cars are going fast, but, what do you do with this data (how do you alert or punish them)
1 is a little tough to solve since it requires training some kind of classifier. 2 is not so bad if you use a velocity field and track individual objects via bounding box. 3 is basically another project. On that note, is it legal to have a speed meter on your front lawn?
In the case of this project, you'd also have to do some modifications on the image-grabbing code. They're using a module that's specific to the Raspberry Pi camera module.
"So it just happens that the horizontal distance covered by the Picamera’s image is roughly equal to the distance from the lens. If you are 10 feet from the lens, the image is about 10 feet across, 47 feet from the lens, about 47 feet across, and so on.
Of course, other cameras may have a different field of view and won’t have this easy to determine correspondence."
Humans are still better at parking spot recognition than $35 hardware.
Of course you'll need a camera with a time machine so you know the spot will be free when you arrive, and not just when you set out.
I'm trying to work on a setup to handle this. I ordered a PiCamera instead of the connect though. I just happen to have a connect laying around.
I've been wondering if it would be possible to combine that with ANPR to give a dashboard-level indicator of uninsured vehicles to watch out for.
* he used Raspbian Jessie (almost but not quite Debian Jessie) and followed instructions for setting up the necessary packages on that distribution
* he tweaked his code to perform adequately on the Pi2 and described the performance limits on that hardware
* his code uses the Raspberry Pi camera library
* he used the Pi camera's field of view in his distance calculations
It's true that you could adapt it to different hardware, a different operating system, a different distance, or a different purpose. Even if you're doing so, it's still useful to have a concrete example to work from. (For example, knowing that the Pi2's performance is marginal for what he's trying to do may help you set expectations for performance of your hardware in your situation.) Without including the specifics you object to, the article would be short, abstract, and basically useless.
Plus I don't think promoting vigilantism is a good thing.
For example, on my road, which is not in a neighborhood and is a country road that serves as a connector between two highways, the speed limit was raised from 35 MPH to 45 MPH several years ago. Accordingly, traffic went from averaging 50-55 MPH to now averaging 65-70 MPH with occasional amateur race car drivers going by so fast you can't tell the type of car they drive. I have found it treacherous to check my mailbox and mow my lawn at certain times of the day (mainly "rush hour" and, oddly enough, Sunday afternoons). Twice in the past five years my mailbox has been obliterated by a speeder losing control of their vehicle and running off the road because they were driving too fast and/or distracted, one time right in front of my eyes as I was walking to the mailbox.
Generally, if you set a speed limit on a long straight road, you can expect the public to exceed it by at least 10 MPH. This effect has been observed by the GHSA[1] and IIHS[2] and is easily researched privately if one is so inclined.
[1] http://www.ghsa.org/html/media/pressreleases/2016/20160412sp... [2] http://www.iihs.org/iihs/sr/statusreport/article/51/4/3
If there was an automated way of dobbing a driver in to the police then this would be useful too - quick tweet/email/text with the message: uninsured vehicle AB12 CDE travelling at 35mph location 51°29'51.3"N 0°08'06.4"W
I have a dumb dash cam that's just awesome for video but is nothing more than video to a sd card, ie, not a computer. I've always wondered if I could use just the video using familiar objects like stop signs, mile markers or lane markers to determine my own speed.
If possible, I think it'll be be helpful if you can shoot a second video or image with all 3 spots empty. I'll probably need it because I plan to use the curb's edges and surface colors of the slots.
Just to confirm, are these videos shot from the same spot where you'll eventually fix your camera?
