Full ALPR Database System for Blue Iris!

SoCal said:
I went in via the web interface and deleted a few cars and it just stopped working.
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I had a cop park in front of one of my LPR cameras with the wind blowing and an alert was triggered every few seconds because there are trees in the FOV. I just deleted 107 images (all the same) of the pickup truck that were created and it didn't cause any issues.

Screen Shot 2025-07-21 at 7.14.04 PM.png
 
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PeteJ said:
Deleting a plate from the web interface shouldn't have broken anything. Sounds like a clean install might be a good idea to get a fresh start. Come back and let us know how it goes.
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Totally agree, hardware issue for sure.
I have all my config screen shots and files so I know how it goes back together. Couple weeks I'll get back on it with newer equipment. That work thing is getting in the way of my fun LOL

You folk here are Totally Magnanimous with this. I'll be back LOL :)
 
Vettester said:
I had a cop park in front of one of my LPR cameras with the wind blowing and an alert was triggered every few seconds because there are trees in the FOV. I just deleted 107 images (all the same) of the pickup truck that were created and it didn't cause any issues.

View attachment 225007
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OK excellent , I have proof of concept working I'll be back with a better windows machine, think I'm on like an i7 990 or similar pile of poop from the 1980's
 
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VideoDad said:
Are these updates already available for download? And what's the timing on the next big release?
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@algertc, I went ahead and did an update using the ps1 script and it does appear that this list of updates is there. Do you have any further info on the next big release and when it might be arriving?
 
jacobcauble said:
Is there a way to get a fuzzy search match over to home assistant? The use case would be that a plate is sent over from Blue Iris to ALPR-database and the OCR is slightly incorrect, but a fuzzy match will match it to a known plate. If so, I'd like to let home assistant know that it matches a known plate for automation purposes.
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Can you clarify what exactly it is that you are looking to achieve? You want to search in HA or in this app? Search past alerts that were sent to HA? I've already gotten the MQTT send working, so I'm happy to add this - just not exactly sure what you are describing.
 
VideoDad said:
@algertc, I went ahead and did an update using the ps1 script and it does appear that this list of updates is there. Do you have any further info on the next big release and when it might be arriving?
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I built a public image accidentally when I was testing. I think that might have like 2/3 of what will actually be in the release. I wanted to have it out last week, but actually had a bit of a health scare (I'm fine..), then was out of the country until yesterday. I can try to polish off the MQTT and make the nightly build for now if you are itching for a particular feature.

Although somewhat old in terms of time, the whole nightly/unstable image is fairly new to the project as far as progress goes (I also don't have any other experience continuously updating self hosted apps outside of this. It's a distinctly different process than publishing a normal hosted web app). I've been dreading using a GitHub runner to build the docker image because they are so slow (and the self-hosted format is extremely strange), but that's probably what I should start doing as the project stabilizes in order to avoid any issues.
 
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algertc said:
This will be ready this evening :)

Edit: Question, do people need to be able to send to multiple MQTT topics? Right now, it looks like this to enter your broker and topic, but I'm wondering if I should change it to be a list of multiple that you can then select from in the notification page. LMK


View attachment 225559
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For my use case, I would like to be able to send the tag associated with the plate, ie Delivery, Family as well as the the Known Plate data if present, ie Bill's Truck. The plate itself also needs to come over.

So I would have at least these three options as choices.

Thanks for getting to this request.
 
prsmith777 said:
For my use case, I would like to be able to send the tag associated with the plate, ie Delivery, Family as well as the the Known Plate data if present, ie Bill's Truck. The plate itself also needs to come over.

So I would have at least these three options as choices.

Thanks for getting to this request.
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Alright sounds good. I can definitely include all of that and make it customizable. I need to look into the mqtt library I'm using and figure out if/how they do fancier dynamic payloads. For example, if you want to have a custom title or message with it or something or that sort. The attributes from the database like the name and tags should be simple though.
 
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algertc said:
I take it back. Probably going to be tomorrow. I want to make it good and test everything thoroughly since this is a high value feature for the HA users.

Looking rly good tho. Taking care of some other roadmap items while I’m at it.
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One other data point I forgot to mention that is important. Need to also include which camera alerted.

Looking forward to testing this out
 
Can someone advise on exactly how the payload sent to HA is supposed to look in MQTT? How am I supposed to send the image?
Having a hard time finding online...

Here is what the test button sends right now:

Code: 
Topic: alprdatabase
QoS: 0
{ "timestamp": "2025-08-01T00:10:50.246Z", "plate_number": "T4X699", "notification_name": "David passing", "broker_name": "Test broker", "test": true, "message": "This is a test MQTT notification" }


It will include all the known plate info and tags and all that, but I need to know exactly how this is supposed to be structured. Again, especially with regard to the image. If someone could send an example of what it should look like, that would be extremely helpful.
 
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This is pretty much how it will look. Everything done except the actual full payload in the mqtt handler.

If you have multiple topics that you want to use from the same broker you need to add another "broker" for each one. I did it this way because it's just much less complex and doesn't really make a big difference. I added the Name to go with it to try to compensate for the UX on that.


Screenshot 2025-07-31 at 6.24.20 PM.png

Screenshot 2025-07-31 at 6.24.52 PM.png
 
algertc said:
How am I supposed to send the image?
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Not sure if this will help, but the way I'm doing it is a two part process. First you need to create an MQTT camera in the HA config.yaml file

Code: 
mqtt:
  camera:
    - topic: BlueIris/westbound_lpr/alert-image-b64
      name: Westbound LPR Alert
      unique_id: camera.westbound_lpr_alert
      image_encoding: b64
      json_attributes_topic: BlueIris/westbound_lpr/attributes
      json_attributes_template:  >-
        {"type":"{{value_json.data.Type}}",
         "memo":"{{value_json.data.Memo}}",
         "json":"{{value_json.data.JSON}}",
         "time":"{{value_json.data.Time}}"}

Then in BI just add an MQTT alert:

Screen Shot 2025-07-31 at 10.11.43 PM.png


This process only stores the last alert image in the media directory of HA so I don't find it very useful.

Screen Shot 2025-07-31 at 9.40.59 PM.png
 
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Vettester said:
Not sure if this will help, but the way I'm doing it is a two part process. First you need to create an MQTT camera in the HA config.yaml file

Code: 
mqtt:
  camera:
    - topic: BlueIris/westbound_lpr/alert-image-b64
      name: Westbound LPR Alert
      unique_id: camera.westbound_lpr_alert
      image_encoding: b64
      json_attributes_topic: BlueIris/westbound_lpr/attributes
      json_attributes_template:  >-
        {"type":"{{value_json.data.Type}}",
         "memo":"{{value_json.data.Memo}}",
         "json":"{{value_json.data.JSON}}",
         "time":"{{value_json.data.Time}}"}

Then in BI just add an MQTT alert:

View attachment 225670

This process only stores the last alert image in the media directory of HA so I don't find it very useful.

View attachment 225671
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Hmm ok. This seems a little odd, but I know there was a HA BI integration, so maybe that’s why it looks like this. Makes sense but I should double check that that works.

I think I’ll just docker a test HA instance and go through the process of setting up the broker and figuring it out.

As I have said, I’m not a HA user, so I’m really not too sure what I’m doing. If anyone does have a definitive answer for how it’s supposed to be sent, please do share.

Does anyone know if the BI HA integration is open source? Being able to see that code would be helpful. Or anything/any other similar integration.
 
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