Making the computer “see”.

I am currently down the OpenCV rabbit hole.
I want to velcro a Rasp Pi to my oil tank and have it “see” how much oil is in there.
I don’t want to see a picture of the meter. That would be too easy.
I want something of an alpha-numeric representation, like “25% remaining” or “3/4 full”.
Something like that.

First stab at making the computer see.

I need to take care of some pre-shoot clean-up of the scene, and may build a small, black background to fit around the meter. Last night, I was thinking about some kind of a mount.

The Pi will also be equipped with a homemade LED light that will come on a few seconds before the camera snaps the picture. This is easily done via the GPIO pins.

And, while I am installing a computer in the basement, it might as well gather some temp and humidity readings, too. I’d like to rig the Pi to switch the dehumidifier electrical outlet on only when humidity gets too high. These stupid dehumidifier things just keep running the fans (burning electricity), even when the humidity gets down to the point you set the thing for. Not so sure I want to mess with relays in an electrical box, however, so I am keeping an eye open for an outlet thingy sort of like an X10. 

Oil level, temp and humidity data will be run back to a server of some sort. Hell, maybe this same box will be the web server!

All of this is being written in Python, BTW.

In order to learn all of this, I am making heavy use of the pyimagesearch website. Thank you, Adrian, for making this stuff approachable for old coots like me. Hey! He’s in CT!