OCR project

[robsdbme]

Hello,

I was wondering if someone could point me in the right direction on this one, or tell me where I could find good C++ programmers to hire for this (if it's possible).

I am trying to automatically(periodically) print screen a custom area of the screen, save it as an image file (the image will have the same format always), and then use OCR to get the text in the image as usable string variables. Is this doable? I was looking into tesseract OCR but I find it a bit unclear.

Thank you !

[GCDEF]

What's the purpose of this app?

[robsdbme]

What's the purpose of this app?

Hey,

The purpose is to get slow live data from a software and use it for statistics. (like for example live stock market quotes that I cannot get other way). If this makes sense.

[robsdbme]

Hey,

The purpose is to get slow live data from a software and use it for statistics. (like for example live stock market quotes that I cannot get other way). If this makes sense.

[robsdbme]

Sorry for the double post, it updated quite slowly.

[GCDEF]

We use this engine, but its API is fairly complicated too. http://rerecognition.com/ I've never used tesseract, but there should be samples out there. OCR engines work well if there's no other graphics in the image that interfere with the characters. That may turn out to be your biggest issue.

[robsdbme]

My skype is " robsdbme " for anyone who has insight on how i can get this done or knows how to do it.

[superbonzo]

I had exactly the same problem some years ago; well, it was not a stock market quote service, but some other live feed of data; there was no API, just an ugly legacy Internet Explorer-only Java web app showing a live table of numbers. At first, I also considered an OCR solution but in the end it turned out to be easier than I thought. It sufficed to install some win32 hooks to grab "update" message, capture the screen and perform a very basic character recognition routine ( the java app used a fixed size, non antialiased font with regular formatting ). Maybe, something like this could work for you too ?

[robsdbme]

I had exactly the same problem some years ago; well, it was not a stock market quote service, but some other live feed of data; there was no API, just an ugly legacy Internet Explorer-only Java web app showing a live table of numbers. At first, I also considered an OCR solution but in the end it turned out to be easier than I thought. It sufficed to install some win32 hooks to grab "update" message, capture the screen and perform a very basic character recognition routine ( the java app used a fixed size, non antialiased font with regular formatting ). Maybe, something like this could work for you too ?

Can we chat on Skype?

[superbonzo]

I don't have a Skype account, sorry. You can ask questions here or you can send me a PM.

[OReubens]

you can get stock quotes via a web API.
I don't think there's any half decent stock broker out there that doesn't provide a web API.