ALPR in Blue Iris detects license plates - but how do I use the MQTT to forward the info to HA?

Hi!

I want to be able to trigger automations when my camera spot a certain car (the plate). My setup is Home assistant (on the “blue”, odroid - box), cameras connected to Blue Iris. In BI there is a ALPR function. The APLR function works ok (not great, but ok). If I log in on https://app.platerecognizer.com/dashboard, I can see the results. But as I mentioned, I want to be able to use the results in Home Assistant.
For person alerts I have created a MQTT event and that works great. I can use that in HA. But I don’t know how to make my license plates to work.
I have under the “Required AI object” in Blue Iris written my license plates. I guess this is wrong - but I don’t know what else to do. Thankful for any help! Over and out,
/Fanan

You may get better luck answering this in the blue iris forum
Blue Iris - Index page (blueirissoftware.com)

Thanks. I did just that a couple of days ago:
https://blueirissoftware.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2300
but since no one is replying, I moved on to this forum. There must be some one in this forum that uses ALPR in BI with HA.

If you find out anything, please share any possible solution, I also just set it up, got plates recognized quite fairly, I can see the actual plates in BI log, but I can’t find out:

  • how to send them to home assistant
  • how to build a database of the recognized license plates,
  • and how to make automation on certain plates (like open gate for friend’s or family member’s plate)

Would be supercool to use it these kind of automations :smiley:

thanks in advance!

hm, take a look at this, looks yummy:

Thank you @Guesswho620
I followed the video and after some trial and error it seems to work - at last!
In short;

  1. Install Platerecognizer with HACS.
  2. Add these lines to your configuration.yaml:
image_processing:
  - platform: platerecognizer
    api_token: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (from Plate recognizer)
    regions:
      - se
      - gb
    watched_plates:
      - ABC123
      - ABC124
    save_file_folder: /config/www/plates
    save_timestamped_file: True
    always_save_latest_file: True
    mmc: False
    source:
      - entity_id: camera.blueiris_carcam

Change the code to your own stuff.

  1. Create an automation (see video)
  2. Add the lines of code to your sensor.yaml (or configuration.yaml, under “sensor:”)
- platform: template
  sensors:
      plate_recognizer:
        friendly_name: "ABC123"
        value_template: "{{ state_attr('image_processing.platerecognizer_1', 'watched_plates').ABC123 }}"

Repeat for each plate.
You now have a binary sensor for each plate and car to use in automations!

Hi @Fanan ,

I just did it, too, fantastic. I also set up the face recognition, and that also works fantastic.
For faces, I followed this comment:

I like it very much since it gives me options what to do in case a person was recognized (to open the gate for example), and what to do if the person in front of my gate is a stranger (then not to open the gate, but rather notify me on my phone).

Could I do something similar with plate recognition? Somehow integrate the watched plates sensors as conditions? I’d really appreciate some advice on this.

Wish I could help out - but that’s above my paygrade :rofl:
Really, it shouldn’t be that difficult, but I’m not your man - since I’m a newbee in HA.

1 Like

No worries :slight_smile: if I find anything useful I’ll let you know! Have fun with HA, I can’t stop playing with it since I found it a year ago, I accomplished sooo much, and I’m only scratching the surface and not even a programmer…

1 Like