Anyone here knowledgeable in OCR scanning/sorting?

[poppy42]

Title says it all. Thinking about a headstamp sorting machine and can do the mechanical side, just need to learn the optical scanner/output part.

Not sure bout ocr but certainly known a few people with OCD! Lol

[William Yanda]

That sir, is a capital idea. At a former job we separated pieces of bentonite that had rust on them by using cameras to identify and air to push the rejects off the conveyor. For brass if you could have them go by the camera one at a time then have a divertor dump them in the correct pile. Lets say you had five places to divert to. You could sort for four different headstamps then the rest go to bin 5. The rough parts will be like Lake City. Somtimes it's LC and a two digit date some times its letters and numbers at 12, 3, 6 and 9. Another fun one would be IMI brass which to an OCR could be IWI. In my current job we us a product that read license plates using OCR and are in the high 90's on accuracy. But most license plates are standardized (most) and they are not usually on their side or upside down. If someone has an LP in a goofy place or it's hanging, all bets are off. You'd have these problems with headstamps since they are round. I'll have to think on it some. There's got to be a way. I don't know if OCR or comparing images would work better. Either way you may have to take a picture, OCR, rotate the picture, OCR it, rotate the picture, ...

There are several Raspberry Pi programs for reading LPs. I've never looked for reading other things, but maybe someones already invented the wheel.

What type of camera are you going to use?

Are you telling us LE license reading capability could be impaired by mounting the plate verticlally rather than horicontally?

[jmorris]

Kind of forgot this was here. I haven’t had time to play with it but this is a 3D printable version shared now.

https://github.com/sjseth/AI-Case-Sorter

His video is long but he does show his progression.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBhd5qHZM7I

Very similar to the way I did the device that sorts cases by weight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1V_Hm3oqlO4

[Ed K]

Dabbled in machine vision reading coins. It can be quite accurate and fast. This company is a leader:

https://www.cognex.com/

I don't imagine you need their bleeding edge tech to accomplish your goal. Lots of minty used equipment available through various industrial surplus sources and eBay so you don't break the bank.

[Half Dog]

I had the same thought once, I might even still have the camera in my garage somewhere. I’m not remembering much about it , I say that more often lately, but you won’t have to read every character just enough to distinguish one from another and the military brass can be the final sort that catches everything not recognized. I wish you luck with your quest.

[mfraser264]

Working for a company that designs and builds custom machines for a variety of operations allows me to comment a bit on this. Working on the design side of the business this is a great idea however becomes very costly in a hurry. Between the machine frame, electronics, feeding systems, custom programming and developing a system to feed several size cartridges and so on.....

It has been done and can be done however out of the reach cost wise for most hand-loaders. The auto feeding system is a big cost as well as the camera. Working on a project that will have 2 cameras and a bar code reader = $$$$.

Wonder if we could develop a simple cost affective concept with all that knowledge we have in this area?

[jmorris]

Wonder if we could develop a simple cost affective concept with all that knowledge we have in this area?

[kevin c]

Very nice, and, better yet, affordable!