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About "Reading Digital Displays" Tutorial
SamQ from United States  [15 posts]
15 year
This tutorial was great for one set of digits (77.0), but what if there were 8 sets of digits in the image that needed to be read?
What extra step or steps would be needed to recognize all the other regions/numbers of the image?

SamQ
Anonymous 15 year
SamQ,

It would probably require the last step (the VBScript) to understand that there would be more than one set of digits to read. You could also just filter the digits into separate sets of digits to be processed once at a time.

Perhaps you have an example that you can share?

STeven.
SamQ from United States  [15 posts] 15 year
STeven,

OK.
An example would be having a video image of this forum site;

a situation where one computer screen is displaying the roboRealm forum site while a second computer (with RoboRealm on it) has a camera taking continuous video images of the forum site (since it's a requirement that the two computers remain totally uncoupled in every way, the screen capture module is not usable).

All the numbers of people having viewed each thread must be captured and processed.

You mentioned 2 ways to read more than one set of digits. Is there any advantage of one over the other?
Which method has a faster processing time?
Which is relatively easier or quicker to program than the other?
If I use the "filter" method, which set of modules would I use to accomplish this?
Now for the most important question:
Which one is easier to maintain?!

Thank you so much for your expert insight,
SamQ
Anonymous 15 year
Sam,

Unfortunately the answer to all your questions is "It depends".

Thanks for the example as that helps to lay out the project requirements and limitations that are being worked with. The first thing I'd try is to see what the image looks like when taking a picture of the computer screen. Cameras get very funky when pointed at an LCD or CRT screen so the image may or may not be usable. That would be the first step.

The next question would be based on the first step which is can you control what is being displayed on the screen? The reason for this is that if the image is not detailed enough then you will not be able to read any of the numbers in the image. But if you can restructure the page being displayed to show the numbers in nice big bold text that might help with the processing of that image. From your example this would require a script on the display machine to read in the RR forum page, process it for all the viewing numbers and then simply print those numbers nice and large on the screen using whatever display mechanism (could also be a simple HTML page) for the second computer to see. Known if this can be done really changes the type of solution that you'd want to use.

Perhaps you can elaborate on the two questions above before we continue with the processing ... and if you can include an image or two that always goes a long way to helping the project make progress!

STeven.
SamQ from United States  [15 posts] 15 year
Steven,

The items being displayed on the screen can't be controlled.

Lets, for the sake of progress, assume that the RR Forum page can be displayed on a really large LCD Screen. A screen large enough to eliminate any difficulties discerning detail in number values.

Given the above assumption, can the previous questions be answered? (especially the one about which set of modules to use)

I'll try to get an image as soon as all the "parts" to the project are assembled.  "Parts" means
1-RR integrated with MSRDS 2008
2-Analog camera tripod and connectivity established
3-Etc....

I just wanted some elaboration as to how to use the filtering technique you briefly mentioned earlier.

We're basically doing OCR-like processing off an LCD computer screen with this project.

Thanks.

SamQ

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