License Plate Reader (SG-Based)

Detects and reads Singapore licence plates from a live camera stream and publishes results downstream over RabbitMQ.

---

Project structure

licenseplatereader/
├── docker-compose.yml
├── .env.example
├── plate_model.pt                  ← YOLO weights (see Setup)
│
├── camera_service/                 ← Buffers live camera frames (port 8002)
│   ├── main.py
│   ├── requirements.txt
│   └── Dockerfile
│
├── ocr_service/                    ← YOLO detection + OCR inference (port 8001)
│   ├── main.py
│   ├── plate_reader.py
│   ├── requirements.txt
│   └── Dockerfile
│
├── detect_plate_service/           ← Orchestrator: quality gates, dedup, publish (port 8081)
│   ├── main.py
│   ├── stream_processor.py
│   ├── event_publisher.py
│   ├── requirements.txt
│   └── Dockerfile
│
└── gantry-interface/               ← Dashboard + AMQP consumer + Arrival bridge (port 3500)
    ├── src/
    │   ├── index.js
    │   └── amqpConsumer.js
    ├── public/
    │   └── index.html
    ├── package.json
    ├── .env.example
    └── Dockerfile

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Prerequisites

• Docker + Docker Compose
• A camera source — one of:
  • IP Webcam app (Android) over MJPEG: http://<phone-ip>:8080/video
  • Any RTSP IP camera
• An Arrival API — a service that accepts POST /arrival with { "license_plate": "SBA1234A" }

---

Setup

1. Create the shared Docker network

docker network create drivethrough-net

2. Download the YOLO model

python download_model.py

Saves plate_model.pt to the project root. Run once.

3. Configure environment

Root .env:

cp .env.example .env

Gantry interface .env:

cp gantry-interface/.env.example gantry-interface/.env

Set at minimum in root .env:

STREAM_URL=http://<phone-ip>:8080/video
AMQP_URL=amqp://guest:guest@rabbitmq:5672/

Set at minimum in gantry-interface/.env:

AMQP_URL=amqp://guest:guest@rabbitmq:5672/
ARRIVAL_API_URL=http://your-arrival-service/arrival

4. Start all services

docker compose up -d

Service	URL
Detect plate orchestrator	http://localhost:8081/docs
OCR service	http://localhost:8001/docs
Camera service	http://localhost:8002
Gantry dashboard	http://localhost:3500
RabbitMQ management UI	http://localhost:15672 (guest / guest)