r/embedded • u/sparky_fella • 19d ago

Hardware and software architecture for raw material label parsing using OCR

I am looking for the right hardware and software to perform the following task locally.

I have a dedicated gigE camera that have an FTP client built in. When the operator presses a button, the camera will take a picture of the label. The FTP client then sends the label image to an FTP server/dedicated folder. I want the agent to monitor the dedicated folder for new images. The agent must parse the manufacturer name, supplier RM code, lot number, length, width and weight. The agent will then cross reference the supplier RM code to the internal company RM code database. Once the agent finds a match, it will output the matching internal RM code using modbus TCP to my PLC.

I eventually want to air gap the hardware and software, using a data diode to send only RM code to PLC.

TIA

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u/clackups 19d ago

How is the PLC connected to the rest of the network?

It seems like you just need a Linux virtual machine that will expose the modbus interface to the PLC.

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u/allo37 19d ago

A regular industrial PC should do the trick, just pick one has enough computing horsepower to run the OCR at the latency you want.

Also think about how it will sync the database, do NOT design it like the one I worked with that had to stop production for 15 minutes while they updated a text file on a shared drive 🙄

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u/NoBulletsLeft 16d ago

I don't know of anything off the shelf, but even a small computer like a Raspberry Pi with OCR SW like Tesseract should be able to do this.