Camera + OCR + web-connectivity

Projects General Guidance
1

Hello community,

I've got a project in mind and I am hoping someone can guide me in the right direction on how to go about bringing the project to life.

Basically, I purchased a Kitchen Safe time-lock container (thekitchensafe.com) and I would like to make an "attachment" of sorts that will sit on top of the safe display (which shows the countdown and battery life) and using a camera will take a photo of the displayed information every X minutes, OCR it and push the OCR'd data out to the web.

So really what I'd like to know is how achievable is this? Roughly what costs would I be looking at?
I am assuming I will need a tiny camera module with LED lights as well as a wireless module and an arduino board. I would like to be able to have it all battery powered and as compact as possible.

Keep in mind I have never worked with hardware, but I have done some programming, so this is really my first project.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers,
bolmax

2

You might check out a Foscam as they have a support forum.

3

zoomkat:
You might check out a Foscam as they have a support forum.

Thanks, though it looks like they mainly specialise in IP cameras and are quite bulky. I was looking for something compact and something I can adjust to suit my needs as outlined in OP.

4

You should probably look at the Raspberry PI (1 or 2)

OCR is well beyond the capabilities of most microcontrollers

5

rogerClark:
You should probably look at the Raspberry PI (1 or 2)

OCR is well beyond the capabilities of most microcontrollers

Thanks, I have actually started to lean more towards the Pi. Cheers.