OpenALPR Cloud doesn't support multiple countries

[sishbi]

Hello, The OpenALPR cloud service used to accept multiple countries but this is no longer possible. The Cloud API only specifies a string field for the country which only accepts a single country. When multiple countries are specified then no response is received and only 'Error' is shown in the flow - but no debug or failure response is shown in the console.

Trying this using a HTTP request node: Request: https://api.openalpr.com/v2/recognize_bytes?secret_key=sk_DEMODEMODEMODEMO&recognize_vehicle=0&country=eu,gb&return_image=0&topn=10 I was able to see the full response: {"error_code": 400, "error": "Could not initialize OpenALPR with given parameters"}

Changing the node-red configuration to only select a single country allowed the request to work again. This is a recent change as I was testing about 2 weeks ago with multiple countries and it was working. Please can you check with OpenALPR to confirm that their integration API is correct (https://github.com/openalpr/cloudapi/blob/master/javascript/src/api/DefaultApi.js - this still shows allowing multiple comma separated countries) and also update the node-red node to only allow single selection of countries. Thanks, Simon.

[sishbi]

I have also opened an issue with OpenALPR project: https://github.com/openalpr/cloudapi/issues/18

[bartbutenaers]

Morning Simon,

Thanks for reporting this issue! Indeed when you select multiple countries, you will get an error: And when you only select a single one, it runs without problems.

It must be a bug and not a new feature. Because when you e.g. live in Korea, you will need to check at least those two styles at the same time: The only thing I can imagine is that they e.g. let you pay now N credits when you try to detect N countries. But we will just have to wait for their feedback.,, So hopefully they respond to your issue soon. Keep me here informed about it!!

also update the node-red node to only allow single selection of countries.

I'm not going to update my node to allow only single country selection because:

• Then I most probably have to revert my changes when they fix your issue
• Existing Node-RED flows might have used the multi-country selection already, so I cannot alter that behaviour just like that.
• Users having the same issue currently will see your issue here and now that there is (hopefully a short term) problem.

I'm short of spare time at the moment, but there are two things I should change in the near future:

• When something went wrong with the cloud service call, you only see it in the status of the node. Node-RED users should be able to detect this kind of problems in another way.
• Seems they they now support extra countries, which should be added to the dropdown:

  <option value="auwide">Australia (wide)</option>
  <option value="br2">Brazil (2-line)</option>
  <option value="in">Indian</option>

Kind regards Bart