Home Assistant

OpenAlpr

OpenAlpr integration for Home Assistant allows you to process licences plates from a camera. You can use them to open a garage door or trigger any other automation.

If you want use a video stream. You need setup the ffmpeg component. See also there for troubleshooting local ffmpeg installation.

Local installation

If you want process all data local you need the command line tool alpr in version > 2.3.1

If you don’t find binaries for your distribution you can compile from source. Documention of how to build openalpr is found here.

On a debian system you can use this cmake command to build only the command line tool (which second part on linux build instruction - ubuntu 14.04+):

cmake -DWITH_TEST=FALSE -DWITH_BINDING_JAVA=FALSE --DWITH_BINDING_PYTHON=FALSE --DWITH_BINDING_GO=FALSE -DWITH_DAEMON=FALSE -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH=/usr ..

Verify your alpr installation with:

wget -O- -q http://plates.openalpr.com/h786poj.jpg | alpr -

Configuration Home Assistant

# Example configuration.yaml entry
openalpr:
  engine: local
  region: eu
  confidence: 80.0
  entities:
   - name: Camera garage 1
     interval: 5
     render: ffmpeg
     input: INPUT_STREAM
     extra_arguments: SOME OTHER FFMPEG STUFF
   - name: Camera garage 2
     interval: 5
     render: image
     input: https://camera_ip/still_image.jpg
     username: admin
     password: bla

Configuration variables:

  • engine (Required): local or cloud for processing
  • region (Required): Country or region. List of Supported value.
  • confidence (Optional): Default 80. The minimum of confidence in percent to process with Home-Assistant.
  • entities (Required): A list of device to add in Home-Assistant.
  • name (Optional): This parameter allows you to override the name of your openalpr entity.
  • interval (Optional): Default 2. Time in seconds to poll a picture. If the interval is 0 It don’t poll and it only process data with openalpr.scan service.
  • render (Optional): default is with ffmpeg. How is Home-Assistant to get a picture from. It support ffmpeg for video streams and image for a still image.
  • input (Required): The source from getting pictures. With ffmpeg it could by all supported input. Image only support a url.
  • extra_arguments (Optional): Only available with ffmpeg.
  • username (Optional): Only available with image for http authentification.
  • password (Optional): Only available with image for http authentification.

Configuration Home Assistant local processing

# Example configuration.yaml entry
openalpr:
  engine: local
  region: eu
  alpr_binary: /usr/bin/alpr
  entities:
...

Configuration variables:

  • alpr_binary (Optional): Default alpr. The command line tool alpr from OpenAlpr software for local processing.

Configuration Home Assistant cloud processing

# Example configuration.yaml entry
openalpr:
  engine: cloud
  region: eu
  api_key: SK_AAABBBBCCCEEEE
  entities:
...

Configuration variables:

Service

  • openalpr.scan: Scan immediately a picture from input.
  • openalpr.restart: Restart a ffmpeg process

Events

# Example configuration.yaml automation entry
automation:
- alias: Open garage door
  trigger:
    platform: event
    Event_type: openalpr.found
    Event_data:
      entity_id: openalpr.camera_garage_1
      plate: BE2183423
...

This event is trigger after openalpr found a new licence plate.