OCR with OpenCV, Tesseract, and Python by PyImageSearch
over 3 years ago – Wed, Aug 19, 2020 at 09:31:38 PM

Howdy folks! It's Wednesday and we've got some news from the community: Earlier this morning the crowdfund campaign went live for PyImageSearch’s latest and greatest educational effort, OCR with OpenCV, Tesseract, and Python which we talked about last week.

So far they’ve raised $154,237 from 542 backers. They tout the project as “Optical Character Recognition made easy,” and it’s not hard to see why. It looks to be a great resource for newbies and experienced professionals- from a passionate and proven member of the OpenCV community.

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is a simple concept but is hard in practice. It’s one of the oldest Computer Vision functions but humanity still hasn’t perfected it. Years of work on OCR have revealed a bunch of great best practices and use cases, though it takes a lot of trial and error to unlock the real potential. At least it used to.

The Intro to OCR Bundle contains an eBook, professional-level code, a pre-configured virtual machine and access to a companion website. Backers will learn the basics of OCR with Tesseract including text detection and localization, how to OCR invoices, and improving the accuracy of your results.

Like their previous campaigns, PyImageSearch are offering additional content with their Practitioner Bundle and Expert Bundle- these go beyond the basics and teach Automatic License Plate Recognition (ANPR), OCR with Karas/TensorFlow, training custom Tesseract models, accelerating OCR with GPUs, and recognizing text in streaming video. These tiers also include everything from the Intro bundle. Expert-tier backers will also get a physical printed edition of the book, access to private forums, and a certification of completion upon completing all of the lessons and quizzes associated with the text.

If you’ve still got questions, they’ve published sample chapters with the Table of Contents of the book as well.

Early adopters will see big savings, too- the book is priced at 25% under MSRP just for backers of the campaign. We wish them the best of luck and hope you’ll go show them some support on their big launch day.

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Remember, backers: The pledge management system for OAK launches September 1st! If you missed the OAK campaign or couldn't complete your pledge for any reason you can fill out the Late Backer form. We'll be back on Friday with a new edition of Community Friday! See you then.

Pledge Management Launches September 1st, plus: How We’re Handling Pre-Orders, and Community Friday Returns!
over 3 years ago – Wed, Aug 19, 2020 at 03:33:21 PM

Welcome (back) to the working week, OpenCV AI Kit fans and watchers. Today’s update is short but dense. Let’s get down to it.

Pledge Management Launches September 1st, You Will Be Invited Automatically When It Launches

We try to make these updates useful and interesting, because we value your time, and sometimes that some important information gets lost in the shuffle. So, let’s make sure this one didn’t: Starting September 1st you’ll be able to confirm or add upgrades to PoE or Wifi/Bluetooth editions, add additional modules outside of your original pledge, set your shipping information for everything in BackerKit. You will have some weeks to complete the survey and your add-ons. You will automatically get invited to this system, you don’t need to do anything.

If you have signed up to be a late backer we will be in contact with you soon.

Pre-orders will start on September 1st, too, in a separate system, at a higher price than the campaign price. You can sign up to be notified using a form.

How We’re Handling Pre-Orders

Note: This was originally published in a less-polished form on Friday's update. Some of you saw it before it was pulled- please read again!

Since the campaign came to a close on Thursday a few of you have asked if we’re planning to do as many campaigns have and use a service, such as InDemand, to continue raising funds. We looked into it and discussed the pros and cons internally a bunch.

We have chosen to just do regular pre-orders, because we're a small team and InDemand wasn’t in our original plan. It would take time to create copy and graphics for another service, and we want to spend every bit of energy we can making sure you, the backers of this campaign, get everything we promised... plus a few more surprises.

It would take time away from us in others ways, too. Giving thoughtful and thorough responses to your messages and writing these updates are just as much work, and is just as important to the team, as creating the hardware and software features you’ll be using in December. An additional service to support would necessarily mean a drop in the quality of those comments and replies.

In other words, we’re choosing to invest our time in the community instead of spending that time trying to raise more money right away. You backed us, so we’re backing you.

... that's not to say we won't plan to try out InDemand, or the whole IndieGoGo crowdfund platform, on a future campaign! We just think it doesn't make sense for us here and now.

Community Friday Returns This Friday

Enough of you missed it last week that we’re bringing it back. Community Friday returns this Friday, August 21st. We'll be coving another Spatial AI Competition phase 1 winner, shining the spotlight on cool community contributions, and thanking you all profusely as per usual. Drop us a comment or an email if you have a cool project of your own.

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Reminder: Backers will get access to BackerKit, the pledge management system, starting on September 1st. You’ll be invited automatically. Good luck with the rest of your day, out there!

PyImageSearch Announces New Book / Crowdfund Campaign, plus: BackerKit Go-live Date
over 3 years ago – Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 03:17:07 AM

Happy Friday, OAK community! It’s our first Friday since the campaign ended, but the good news hasn’t stopped. 

Before we get started, a reminder for backers: The BackerKit system will go live on September 1st. You'll be invited to it when it goes live. You don't need to ask to be invited, it will happen on September 1st automatically. You'll be able to set your shipping address, confirm your upgrades, and add additional modules there.

 PyImageSearch Is Crowdfunding A New Book: OCR with OpenCV, Tesseract, and Python 

Backers will remember PyImageSearch their interview with Brandon and our feature on them in Community Spotlight #2. Some of the big goals of OAK are making embedded computer vision more accessible, approachable, and productizable. Adrian Rosebrock’s work at PyImageSearch has been educating and growing the community with these same goals for years, and we’re happy to support this new book.

You can find the full announcement on their blog, watch the campaign introduction video on IndieGoGo, and in another blog post the table of contents was revealed earlier today. 

The book will cover training OCR models, reading specialized text like receipts and license plates, handwriting recognition and much more. After completing the online quizzes and lessons you'll even get a certificate of completion you can put on your LinkedIn profile.

Education is extremely important and these kind of projects only make the community stronger. From an established author who has delivered on campaigns before, it’s a win-win.

Best of luck with the campaign, Adrian! To the rest of you: We’ve been told there may be a special deal for the very first backers on launch day, August 19th at 10am EDT. You may want to set a reminder on your phone.

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The campaign might be over, but we've still got a lot of work to do, and a lot of great stuff to show you. Have a great weekend, everyone!

If You Missed Backing The Campaign Read This!
over 3 years ago – Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 12:28:06 AM

Hi, everyone! The OAK community is a lot bigger than it was just 24 hours ago, and that’s awesome to see. The way this campaign accelerated at the end was truly special. All we can say here is "Wow." We've got important business to take care of today, however.

"I Missed The Campaign!"

Alas! Some of you reading this didn’t make it in time. You forgot, or your alarm didn’t go off, or you missed the email, or Kickstarter didn't like your payment method. There are a ton of totally understandable reasons you may have missed the cutoff at 6:01am PDT.

If you wanted to back the campaign, but couldn’t for whatever reason, we’ve created a form for you to fill out and contact us. We’ll get in touch with you about the next steps when we have more information. The "I missed the campaign" window will only be open for a limited time- so let us know fast.

Link: Fill out the "I missed the campaign" form

Pre-Order Notification Signup

If you’re looking to pre-order OAK, especially in larger quantities, please fill out the pre-order notification signup form. Let us know in the form what quantities you are hoping to purchase and what you want to build with OAK.

Link: Fill out the Pre-order notification signup form

Just because the campaign is over, doesn't mean we're done! You've got a lot of questions, and we've got more details to share and more surprises in store. Thank you for coming with us!

We break down Shipping Details, Add-on and Pre-Order prices. Plus: An Interview with Community Member Marx Melencio
almost 4 years ago – Thu, Aug 13, 2020 at 03:20:05 AM

Hi again! We're less than $5,000 away from the $1.2m goal of a free AI model library for backers. In advance of that, we thought another update around Spatial AI for Good was in order. After the video you'll find a ton of useful info on how to complete your pledge and select add-ons, so stick around!

 Interview with Community Member Marx Melencio 

OpenCV CEO Satya Mallick spoke with OAK community member and Phase 1 winner of the Spatial AI Competition, Marx Melencio, over video chat this week. Marx’s story is a great example of the power of hard work, creativity, and using Spatial AI for Capital-G Good.

Thanks, again Marx! Best of luck in the competition.

Add-ons, Stretch Goals, Pre-Orders and BackerKit

As the campaign picks up steam on our way toward the finish line, a lot of you are asking about the various unlocks and how to be the first to get them. Welcome, new backers! This list is for you.

• OAK-1 and OAK-D will ship in December 2020.
• All other stretch-goal models (OAK-1-POE, OAK-D-POE, OAK-D-WIFI) will ship in March 2021.
• Please keep this in mind when choosing your selections in BackerKit once you are invited. If you want models sooner, make sure to select the regular OAK-1 or OAK-D. 

• To add an OAK-1 to your pledge, increase your pledge by $99. To add an OAK-D, increase your pledge by $149.
• To add OAK-1-POE, increase your pledge by $149. To add an OAK-D-POE module, increase your pledge by $199.
• To switch your OAK pledge from a non-PoE to PoE edition, increase your pledge by $50 for each OAK module you wish to replace with a PoE one.
• If you wish to add an OAK-D with Wifi/Bluetooth (OAK-D-WIFI), increase your pledge by $149. OAK-D backers will be able to choose between OAK-D-WIFI and regular OAK-D in BackerKit at no additional cost.
• You can add different modules in different quantities at once. These are special backer-only prices.

• All regular OAK-1 and OAK-D modules ship in December 2020. The OAK-D modules will include an IMU at no additional cost.
• OAK-1, OAK-D, OAK-1-POE, OAK-D-POE all get aluminum cases.          
• OAK-D-WIFI is not planned to get a case, but we will see about giving it a shot!

• Separately from the add-on site for Backers, public pre-orders will be launching on BackerKit for OAK-1 and OAK-D. The prices will be $50 more than Kickstarter campaign prices and will ship in December 2020: OAK-1 will be $149 and OAK-D will be $199 for a limited time during pre-orders. You’ll be able to find the link on our campaign page once the campaign ends.

You’ll be able to confirm you’re getting all the correct add-ons and enter your final shipping information in BackerKit. You will be invited to BackerKit with the email address used in your Kickstarter account 2 weeks after the campaign closes when we send your Backer Survey.

Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments! We're so close to $1,200,000. See you then!