DIY license plate reader with Raspberry Pi and Machine Learning

A few months ago, I started entertaining the idea of giving my car the ability to detect and recognize objects. I mostly fancied this idea because I've seen what Teslas are capable of, and while I didn't want to buy a Tesla right away (Model 3 is looking juicier with each passing day I gotta say), I thought I'd try meeting my dream halfway. Below, I've documented each step in the project. If you just want to see a video of the detector in action/the GitHub link, skip to the bottom. I started by thinking of what such a system should be capable of.