Method and apparatus for monitoring an analog meter
AssigneeSetrix Aktiengesellschaft
InventorMing-Yee Chiu
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method and apparatus for remote monitoring of an analog meter is set out which employs a Hough Transform on the edge points of the meter scale to obtain the center of the scale. The graduation marks and the needle are detected from the intensity profile along various radii. Thereby, the meter reading can be flexibly adopted to different meter scales during an easy training process. The method can be modified for oblique reading of the scale.
Claims10
A method for monitoring an analog meter having a set of graduation segments and at least one needle, the method comprising the steps of:
- recording a digitized image of the meter;
- extracting a set of edge points, the points representing the graduation segments;
- performing a Hough Transform on the set of edge points so as to obtain a center point of the graduation segments;
- and
- extracting an intensity profile of the image along a path through the graduation segments so as to obtain a set of detected graduation segments and a position of the needle relative to the graduation segments.
An apparatus for monitoring an analog meter, comprising:
- a sensor for obtaining a digitized image;
- a data processor for:
- extracting a set of edge points from the image wherein the edge points represent graduation segments of the meter,
- performing a Hough Transform on the set of edge points to obtain a center point,
- extracting an intensity profile of the image along a path through the graduation segments;
- obtaining a position of the needle relative to the set of detected graduation segments;
- and
- an interface device for communicating with a communication network data generated by the data processor.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.