Re: Easiest way to do VGA to Text
rhkra...@gmail.com writes: > I know this is off point (because you are not the original poster, who, > iirc, > is blind or partially blind), but, if the only reason to reconfigure the > BIOS > is to set the correct date and time, an alternate would be to boot with > the > wrong time, then use, set the (software) clock to the correct time > (possibly > using the utility that syncs to the atomic clocks in Colorado or > wherever, and > then using that other utility that lets you set the hardware clock from > the > software clock. Raspberry Pi's do exactly what you are describing when they run Linux. They have no running internal clock so when they power up, they can only reference seconds that start from 0 in their timer register. Instead of a big bang, we are talking about a little pop. At some point, the Pi gets a network connection going and goes out to pool.ntp.org where there are thousands of unix boxes all over the world that can give you UTC or coordinated universal time to within a second or so if you use a pool near where you live. Search for pool.ntp.org. Very briefly, servers connected to actual atomic clocks are Stratum 1 servers. You can even become one of those by having your own atomic clock or by using a receiver that can sync to the atomic clocks carried by such systems as GPS. These are incredibly accurate. For the rest of us, not trying to crowd source a radio telescope or do some other task that requires accuracy to umteen decimal places, ntpd can get you there to within a second when configured correctly. Ntpd even has routines that check your clock against all the others and add or delete fractions of seconds so the longer your clock runs, the more accurate it gets to a certain point. If you do have a hardware clock, Linux automatically updates it. If you look at system shutdown messages, that's one of them as processes are being shut off. Martin McCormick WB5AGZ
Re: Easiest way to do VGA to Text
Felix Miata writes: > Are these old Dells continuously connected to power whether booted or not? Yes. > I have a bunch of old Dells. When left unconnected to power, some wear > down the > 2032 coin cell CMOS batteries with unusual haste. Once this happens and > the > battery is replaced, reconfiguring the BIOS is required, unless 100% use > of > defaults proves acceptable, which because of the date and time at least, > for me is > never. I know what you mean. Some time before I retired in 2015, we had a Dell server at work that must have had bad steering diodes somewhere on the mother board because it could drain one of those 2032's in just a few hours. Nobody even knew there was a problem until it was shut down for some length of time and then it would come up wrong. Trying to remember what all happened is a bit difficult now but I seem to remember that one could power it up and it would start immediately for 10 or 15 seconds and then shut off at which time one could press the Start button and it would run with all the defaults. Good servers just remember what power states they were in when last shut down or maybe there is a BIOS setting that you can set to determine this behavior but there is none of this business of running for a few seconds and then going in to shutdown. The department that actually owned the server decided to replace it with a new one and that's the end of that story as far as I can relate. The university would have put the defective server in Surplus and state law required that it be sold at auction at which point, some poor bloak would buy it and make the same discovery we had made.:-) Martin
Re: Easiest way to do VGA to Text
On 01/08/2019 19:13, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote: > On Thursday, August 01, 2019 01:49:34 PM Felix Miata wrote: >> I have a bunch of old Dells. When left unconnected to power, some wear down >> the 2032 coin cell CMOS batteries with unusual haste. Once this happens >> and the battery is replaced, reconfiguring the BIOS is required, unless >> 100% use of defaults proves acceptable, which because of the date and time >> at least, for me is never. > I know this is off point (because you are not the original poster, who, iirc, > is blind or partially blind), but, if the only reason to reconfigure the BIOS > is to set the correct date and time, an alternate would be to boot with the > wrong time, then use, set the (software) clock to the correct time (possibly > using the utility that syncs to the atomic clocks in Colorado or wherever, > and > then using that other utility that lets you set the hardware clock from the > software clock. > > I forget the names of those various utilities ;-) > I think one is ntp (network time protocol) Paul -- Paul Sutton http://www.zleap.net gnupg : 7D6D B682 F351 8D08 1893 1E16 F086 5537 D066 302D https://fediverse.party/ - zl...@social.isurf.ca
Re: Easiest way to do VGA to Text
On Thursday, August 01, 2019 01:49:34 PM Felix Miata wrote: > I have a bunch of old Dells. When left unconnected to power, some wear down > the 2032 coin cell CMOS batteries with unusual haste. Once this happens > and the battery is replaced, reconfiguring the BIOS is required, unless > 100% use of defaults proves acceptable, which because of the date and time > at least, for me is never. I know this is off point (because you are not the original poster, who, iirc, is blind or partially blind), but, if the only reason to reconfigure the BIOS is to set the correct date and time, an alternate would be to boot with the wrong time, then use, set the (software) clock to the correct time (possibly using the utility that syncs to the atomic clocks in Colorado or wherever, and then using that other utility that lets you set the hardware clock from the software clock. I forget the names of those various utilities ;-)
Re: Easiest way to do VGA to Text
Martin McCormick composed on 2019-07-30 12:01 (UTC-0500): > I have 4 older PC's that generally work well running > debian but Right now, 3 of them need varying degrees of attention > to their BIOS setups as Dell motherboards and possibly other > brands will occasionally modify their boot sequences for some > reason and the only way one can boot from a CDROM is to get in to > the BIOS setup and yank the boot order back to one where the CD > drive is ahead of the hard drive or put an unbootable hard drive > in. Six or eight months later, one will suddenly discover that > the boot sequence has fallen back to the useless one where the > floppy drive is first, followed by the hard drive followed by the > CDROM. Are these old Dells continuously connected to power whether booted or not? I have a bunch of old Dells. When left unconnected to power, some wear down the 2032 coin cell CMOS batteries with unusual haste. Once this happens and the battery is replaced, reconfiguring the BIOS is required, unless 100% use of defaults proves acceptable, which because of the date and time at least, for me is never. -- Evolution as taught in public schools is religion, not science. Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/
Re: Easiest way to do VGA to Text
David Christensen writes: > What about using a computer whose CMOS Setup utility is accessible via the > serial port? This article indicates the Dell 2450 is capable: > > > http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Remote-Serial-Console-HOWTO/rhl-biosserial.html > > > David > > Thanks for the information but None of the Dells I have are that model. They are all traditional eyeballs-only style. I even have a card that was manufactured many years ago that replaces the VGA card in a number of PC models but not, of course, the ones I have. I had bought it to use at work and it did work fine in a system there but the card will not physically fit the connector on the one system that has a removable video output card and the others all have VGA integrated in to the mother board. You fight the war withthe weapons you have, not what you wish you had. The other possibility touches on a comment that another poster to this thread mentioned. I do own an iPad which has a commercial OCR program on it that while driving one crazy with it's limitations, can sometimes work quite well. If you use the iPad's rear-facing camera and shoot a photo of the monitor screen, it sometimes produces useful results but it is normally kicking and screaming every step of the way. The OCR program is really meant to photograph pieces of paper under light that doesn't flicker. The monitor screen is a classic CRT which flickers at the frame rate of 60 FPS with no setting to increase exposure time which might solve the problem. I waited until night, clamped the iPad in to a tripod fixture aimed at the CRT and observed that it continuously cycled in and out of error mode due to the flicker. A LCD-type monitor might work much better as they have almost no flicker. This is definitely one of those projects in which one must not let perfect be the enemy of good enough. Thanks for the good ideas. Martin
Re: Easiest way to do VGA to Text
john doe writes: > On 7/30/2019 7:01 PM, Martin McCormick wrote: > > > > I have 4 older PC's that generally work well running > > debian but Right now, 3 of them need varying degrees of attention > > to their BIOS setups as Dell motherboards and possibly other > > brands will occasionally modify their boot sequences for some > > reason and the only way one can boot from a CDROM is to get in to > > the BIOS setup and yank the boot order back to one where the CD > > drive is ahead of the hard drive or put an unbootable hard drive > > in. Six or eight months later, one will suddenly discover that > > the boot sequence has fallen back to the useless one where the > > floppy drive is first, followed by the hard drive followed by the > > CDROM. > > > > Why not "simply" deconnecting the hdd once booted reconnecting it? > Granted, it's clearly not ideal! :) I chuckled when I read your message. Not because there was anything at all wrong with the suggestion but because that was the first thing I tried years ago when I stumbled across the problem. Since the boot drive was disconnected, the computer just gave me that nasty little double high-pitched beep which says the game is over before it even started. It seems that there has to be a drive in place that would boot if only it could. Again many thanks. Martin
Re: Easiest way to do VGA to Text
Joe Pfeiffer wrote: > I wasn't keeping track of statistics (I wasn't conducting an experiment, > I had a pamphlet that needed to be recreated and then edited), but the > results were very very close to 100% I certainly spent a lot more time > on reformatting and editing than I did proofreading. ok but because you completed a simple task, you can not conclude it is working good. I mean good for you. I have tried many programs. Couple of OCR for example and I compared with commercial OCR. I tried festival, viavoice and many others TTS and STT - nothing useful - just a prove of concept or incomplete useless code. Yes it is useless compared to commercial tools, so again if you want good results in this area it should be commercial. It is interesting to know if something runs under linux.
Re: Easiest way to do VGA to Text
Doug McGarrett wrote: > Does your repo have cuneiform? I found that cuneiform works LOTS better > than tesseract. > (You can find cuneiform in the rpmfind app, and convert it with alien if > you can't find a deb version.) Looks like it is 10y old already - as I said - all the investments in research and development stopped around that time. And as I said I am very sceptic - I mean compared to commercial tools all the sort of thing looks childish. If you want to play and waste some time - good, if you want to do a serious work - bad. regards
Re: Easiest way to do VGA to Text
deloptes writes: > Joe Pfeiffer wrote: > >> I used tesseract-ocr, mentioned previously, a couple of years ago with >> very good success. Also, the problem he's trying to solve is much > > what means very good success? You had to proof read it at the end - time > spent. For me either something works or it doesn't none of them worked even > close to good Yes, I did have to proofread, and of course that took time. But if you're setting perfection as the only acceptable performance level, no OCR software will ever achieve it. Human eyes don't meet that standard. I wasn't keeping track of statistics (I wasn't conducting an experiment, I had a pamphlet that needed to be recreated and then edited), but the results were very very close to 100% I certainly spent a lot more time on reformatting and editing than I did proofreading. >> simpler than the general OCR problem; he's got the actual correct pixels >> (rather than a scan), and maybe even have knowledge of what fonts are >> used. That makes a huge difference. >> > > I doubt it - really! Let me know at the end. I am curious. > > regards
Re: Easiest way to do VGA to Text
On 07/31/2019 02:22 PM, deloptes wrote: Joe Pfeiffer wrote: I used tesseract-ocr, mentioned previously, a couple of years ago with very good success. Also, the problem he's trying to solve is much what means very good success? You had to proof read it at the end - time spent. For me either something works or it doesn't none of them worked even close to good simpler than the general OCR problem; he's got the actual correct pixels (rather than a scan), and maybe even have knowledge of what fonts are used. That makes a huge difference. I doubt it - really! Let me know at the end. I am curious. regards Does your repo have cuneiform? I found that cuneiform works LOTS better than tesseract. (You can find cuneiform in the rpmfind app, and convert it with alien if you can't find a deb version.) --doug
Re: Easiest way to do VGA to Text
Joe Pfeiffer wrote: > I used tesseract-ocr, mentioned previously, a couple of years ago with > very good success. Also, the problem he's trying to solve is much what means very good success? You had to proof read it at the end - time spent. For me either something works or it doesn't none of them worked even close to good > simpler than the general OCR problem; he's got the actual correct pixels > (rather than a scan), and maybe even have knowledge of what fonts are > used. That makes a huge difference. > I doubt it - really! Let me know at the end. I am curious. regards
Re: Easiest way to do VGA to Text
deloptes writes: > Martin McCormick wrote: > >> I have 4 older PC's that generally work well running >> debian but Right now, 3 of them need varying degrees of attention >> to their BIOS setups as Dell motherboards and possibly other >> brands will occasionally modify their boot sequences for some >> reason and the only way one can boot from a CDROM is to get in to >> the BIOS setup and yank the boot order back to one where the CD >> drive is ahead of the hard drive or put an unbootable hard drive >> in. Six or eight months later, one will suddenly discover that >> the boot sequence has fallen back to the useless one where the >> floppy drive is first, followed by the hard drive followed by the >> CDROM. > > I have not heard so far of working OCR free under linux. I would buy > commercial software that can work as screen reader. You can pipe the images > from the linux PC to that software and hear the text. > > This is not only the OCR part, but also the reading and what I have seen > under Linux is all BS. There were very good projects 10-15y ago, but I have > not heard of a break through in any of them. For example ViaVoice a STT > program used to run on linux and was dropped when IBM and Phillips stopped > the project cause DARPA stopped the funding. Festival is good as TTS, but > is far away from commercial quality and so on. > > Making a good reader program is very complex and sophisticated thing and > there are many unsolved problems to deal with. This means you can not just > OCR the screen and dump it to the reader - you must preprocess it and often > go to semantics, which makes it pretty difficult. I used tesseract-ocr, mentioned previously, a couple of years ago with very good success. Also, the problem he's trying to solve is much simpler than the general OCR problem; he's got the actual correct pixels (rather than a scan), and maybe even have knowledge of what fonts are used. That makes a huge difference. > If you have time to waste, keep us posted of your progress. Last time I did > research on the topic was 10+y ago, when I wrote my thesis on dialogue > systems, so please, correct me if I am wrong and if there is a useful > software out there. Honestly I doubt it, cause people massively got dumber > in the past 10y, of course except the readers of this list :) > > best regards
Re: Easiest way to do VGA to Text
On 7/30/19 10:01 AM, Martin McCormick wrote: I've been trying to do the impossible, more like the impractical, for some time now so I need a knowledge infusion. I want to be able to read the VGA output of a computer, do OCR on it and have ASCII text. As a computer user who happens to be blind, one of the most frustrating issues is the fact that except for expensive servers, none of these boxes output any machine readable text when booting up or in setup mode such as when the coin cell that powers the CMOS BIOS gives up the ghost and one needs to do a setup on it, etc. It seems as though we may have reached one milestone in that one can buy a usb frame grabber that spits out UVC webcam-style video. The representative of the company which makes the device told me that most common flavors of VGA cards produce signals that would work with the device but some odd-ball cards won't work with it which makes sense. Assuming most will work, what one would have is frame after frame of digitized video. If this is a setup screen, the only thing likely to be changing until you do something is the cursor may be blinking otherwise, it's going to be pretty stable. You'd have one frame of video to do the OCR on and then one does something such as hit the Tab or one of the arrow keys and then you grab another frame and read it and so forth. Are there any free projects out there which take the raw video as input and output text as output since the frame grabber is just the beginning of the beast and then you have to convert it to text and maybe some method of determining where the highlight as in cursor position is so as to know what one is about to select? Needless to say, but saying it anyway to avoid confusion, one would have the frame grabber and text engine on a different working debian computer since the sick one isn't capable of doing much until the BIOS gets set correctly. I have 4 older PC's that generally work well running debian but Right now, 3 of them need varying degrees of attention to their BIOS setups as Dell motherboards and possibly other brands will occasionally modify their boot sequences for some reason and the only way one can boot from a CDROM is to get in to the BIOS setup and yank the boot order back to one where the CD drive is ahead of the hard drive or put an unbootable hard drive in. Six or eight months later, one will suddenly discover that the boot sequence has fallen back to the useless one where the floppy drive is first, followed by the hard drive followed by the CDROM. Martin McCormick WB5AGZ What about using a computer whose CMOS Setup utility is accessible via the serial port? This article indicates the Dell 2450 is capable: http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Remote-Serial-Console-HOWTO/rhl-biosserial.html David
Re: Easiest way to do VGA to Text
On 7/30/2019 7:01 PM, Martin McCormick wrote: > > I have 4 older PC's that generally work well running > debian but Right now, 3 of them need varying degrees of attention > to their BIOS setups as Dell motherboards and possibly other > brands will occasionally modify their boot sequences for some > reason and the only way one can boot from a CDROM is to get in to > the BIOS setup and yank the boot order back to one where the CD > drive is ahead of the hard drive or put an unbootable hard drive > in. Six or eight months later, one will suddenly discover that > the boot sequence has fallen back to the useless one where the > floppy drive is first, followed by the hard drive followed by the > CDROM. > Why not "simply" deconnecting the hdd once booted reconnecting it? Granted, it's clearly not ideal! :) -- John Doe
Re: Easiest way to do VGA to Text
Martin McCormick wrote: > I have 4 older PC's that generally work well running > debian but Right now, 3 of them need varying degrees of attention > to their BIOS setups as Dell motherboards and possibly other > brands will occasionally modify their boot sequences for some > reason and the only way one can boot from a CDROM is to get in to > the BIOS setup and yank the boot order back to one where the CD > drive is ahead of the hard drive or put an unbootable hard drive > in. Six or eight months later, one will suddenly discover that > the boot sequence has fallen back to the useless one where the > floppy drive is first, followed by the hard drive followed by the > CDROM. I have not heard so far of working OCR free under linux. I would buy commercial software that can work as screen reader. You can pipe the images from the linux PC to that software and hear the text. This is not only the OCR part, but also the reading and what I have seen under Linux is all BS. There were very good projects 10-15y ago, but I have not heard of a break through in any of them. For example ViaVoice a STT program used to run on linux and was dropped when IBM and Phillips stopped the project cause DARPA stopped the funding. Festival is good as TTS, but is far away from commercial quality and so on. Making a good reader program is very complex and sophisticated thing and there are many unsolved problems to deal with. This means you can not just OCR the screen and dump it to the reader - you must preprocess it and often go to semantics, which makes it pretty difficult. If you have time to waste, keep us posted of your progress. Last time I did research on the topic was 10+y ago, when I wrote my thesis on dialogue systems, so please, correct me if I am wrong and if there is a useful software out there. Honestly I doubt it, cause people massively got dumber in the past 10y, of course except the readers of this list :) best regards
Re: Easiest way to do VGA to Text
On 7/30/2019 8:12 PM, Stefan Monnier wrote: >> As a computer user who happens to be blind, one of the >> most frustrating issues is the fact that except for expensive >> servers, none of these boxes output any machine readable text >> when booting up or in setup mode such as when the coin cell that >> powers the CMOS BIOS gives up the ghost and one needs to do a >> setup on it, etc. > > Actually, cheap little boxes like the BananaPi (and the legion of > similar SBCs) do output via a serial line, so you might want to try > that route. > > They're also pleasantly low-noise and fairly power-efficient. > For a fanless solution the 'apu' from 'pcengines' are not that bad. -- John Doe
Re: Easiest way to do VGA to Text
> As a computer user who happens to be blind, one of the > most frustrating issues is the fact that except for expensive > servers, none of these boxes output any machine readable text > when booting up or in setup mode such as when the coin cell that > powers the CMOS BIOS gives up the ghost and one needs to do a > setup on it, etc. Actually, cheap little boxes like the BananaPi (and the legion of similar SBCs) do output via a serial line, so you might want to try that route. They're also pleasantly low-noise and fairly power-efficient. Stefan
Re: Easiest way to do VGA to Text
Martin McCormick wrote: > I've been trying to do the impossible, more like the > impractical, for some time now so I need a knowledge infusion. > > I want to be able to read the VGA output of a computer, > do OCR on it and have ASCII text. > > As a computer user who happens to be blind, one of the > most frustrating issues is the fact that except for expensive > servers, none of these boxes output any machine readable text > when booting up or in setup mode such as when the coin cell that > powers the CMOS BIOS gives up the ghost and one needs to do a > setup on it, etc. The parts that you will need: - a video capture device. I don't know about VGA input, but I do know that HDMI video capture devices can be had for prices ranging from $25 to $250 or so. - transformation from video to still images can be done via the package imagemagick - OCR can be done with the package tesseract-ocr In future, if you can arrange to buy used server hardware instead of desktop-class machines, you'll have access to various IPMI (DRAC, ILO) serial console systems which include BIOS access. -dsr-
