Automatic License Plate Recognition system

The purpose of the system is to automatically open gate for known cars. Operation: A car drives up to the front The system recognize a license plate and reads the number Logs time, date, picture of car and read license number (for security and troubleshooting) The number is compared towards a register of approved cars If car is approved the system sends a start signal to gate or car-wash who will start. Apart from recognizing cars and send a signal the system also need a administration front end. This was thought to be web based like administer a router or a switch. The administration need to have the following: Schedule for the system to be active A register over known vehicles License plate number Contact details Expire date Billing model Number of allowed passes per X day period. (0=infinite , 3,7 = 3 passes over 7 days) Type of pass System LOG Statistics (to see potential new customer to contract or notice unlikely many passes on a customer to detect tampering with the system) Billing information/data Addresses to surveillance cameras. The billing is thought of being made in two ways: 1. Bill contracted car owner the month for number of passes. 2. Bill contracted car owner a fee every month and give him the opportunity to pass how much he need (with the possibility of a restriction of x passes per x days, for example max 3 passes per week). Suggested hardware platform: If this could be done in a good way we would like to deploy the system on a Android device. This is beacuse of the price, low heat, no fans or moving parts, easily build etc. For example: Android Rikomagic MK802 IV (or MK902) with Quadcore 1.8GHz Cortex A9, GPU Mali-400 MP4 @533MHz 2 GB ram. 8GB ROM. or a SFF computer running Linux or Windows. We are also using an IP surveillance camera with H264 video stream. This canera also have GPIO that has to be read and controlled from software. If this is not the best solution we need a GPIO interface seperately for opening and telling when a car drives up. Suggested software: For ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) use Java ANPR or OpenCV ANPR or new development. Small database for logs and car rehister etc. Small webserver for administration This could be a long term business relation if we manage to make a good system at a low cost. We also have some more projects in pipeline.