Blue Iris

Hello everyone, I'm somewhat a noob to BI but have been in computer realm (professionally) for over 20 years with experience from the network jack to writing code. Fluent in PowerShell and C++.

I've searched the web and this forum for a few days now and haven't found what I'm looking for, so i apologize if this has been covered in other threads.
BI by default stores the LPR confirmed image in the Alerts folder, however i would like it to be stored in a separate folder. Is there a simple solution or setting that I'm missing?
I'm running BI version 5

alternatively, and this might be a topic for another thread, but i would like to store plate numbers onto a database or be alerted if a particular plate is recognized. Any tips or ideas are appreciated.

Thanks! I look forward to this community helping me out.

I have some experience with this one, and I think MQTT could do all of this:

BI by default stores the LPR confirmed image in the Alerts folder, however i would like it to be stored in a separate folder. Is there a simple solution or setting that I'm missing?
I'm running BI version 5
alternatively, and this might be a topic for another thread, but i would like to store plate numbers onto a database or be alerted if a particular plate is recognized. Any tips or ideas are appreciated.

I have BI5 MQTT set up to send the identified number plate to my home automation (Homeseer). The key is the BI5 variable &PLATE. This has to be an ALERT topic, as otherwise there has been no CPAI analysis so no data regarding the number plate. The BI5 Alert looks like this:


And my payload is Clearly that could be picked up by anything that can read MQTT. At the moment I only use it as a proof of concept to flash my outside lights as I near my house, but even Homeseer keeps a short term log of the numbers, so that shouldn't be too hard to figure out. My camera position is not ideal for ALPR leading to errors, so I have to put variations of my plate into the Homeseer event. With a good camera in the right place, I think this would work well.

I did also set it up at one stage to send a base64 jpeg image via MQTT too. Checking my notes you can use the following variables in the MQTT payload:

• {"plate":"&PLATE"} which gives you the OCR’d number plate,
• {"AlertImgPath":"&ALERT_PATH"} gives the path of the jpg image,
• {"Alert_AI":"&MEMO"} gives the ALPR AI info.
• {"Date":"%d-%m-%Y %H:%M:%S"} gives date and time,
• {"Camera":"&CAM"} adds in the camera name that was triggered.

Once again, these can be used individually, or combined into one payload

I checked the Homeseer forum discussion, and of course the variable to send the image is actually "&ALERT_JPEG" which didn't like being mixed with other payloads.

Awesome! I’ve yet to setup home assistant or any other variant but it’s in the future plans as I have many zwave devices in queue.
I’ve briefly researched how home assistant works and will look into the other one. Maybe I can run it in a VM from my server.

As for ALPR, I’m learning a lot about camera placement and still experimenting on positions and having quite the difficulty reading plates. Maybe I’ll write up a doc on my placement woes for others in the future.

Thank you again. At this point, I’ll just write a script to copy out the jpg’s to a folder every 5min.