An Improved Transcriber for OwlRepo

Background

OwlRepo[1][2] is a popular website created by geospiza for tracking and analyzing FM data.
Users only need to upload owl screenshots to update the database, which makes it very easy to use.

However, it is not perfect at transcribing data. So I tried to improve it.

Problems

Problem 1: Column Misalignment
Sometimes when the store name is too simple, some columns in the transcription results are moved to the next column, resulting in invalid data.
See xQuin's item in the following example.

https://owlrepo.com/listing/72f52fa9-5f7b-47f6-849c-1fb6681c76b1


Problem 2: Overlapping Digits
When the price of an item is over a billion, the price becomes too long and the billion digit overlaps with the “bundle”. This makes it difficult for the OCR software to recognize the two numbers.
See Reisen's and Luke's items in the following example:

https://owlrepo.com/listing/57e12a39-da99-41b1-94be-d0fc8f4b403a


Solution
The solution consists of four steps：

1. Make a virtual grid to eliminate column misalignment.
2. Filter pixels by color to extract item names, counts, and overlapping digits.
3. Fix the shape of overlapping digits, only 3 cases total (1|1, 1|2, 2|1).
4. Run OCR on each cell to get the results.

Demo

And here is the transcribed result:

Code:

"Maple Shield"
count: 34
['Homofil', '1-6 top', '1', '28,999,999', '1']
['FruitBish', '1-13 mid', '1', '99,999,999', '1']
['Nixar', '1-2 IntEq,', '1', '500,000,000', '1']
['Nixar', '1-2 IntEq,', '1', '415,000,000', '1']
['iWaifu', '4-2 Drea.', '1', '42,999,999', '1']
['Reisen', 'qwertyuio.', '1', '2,147,483,647', '1']
['Luke', '6-7 ##door', '1', '1,300,000,000', '1']
['Nixar', '1-2 IntEq,', '1', '200,000,000', '1']

Code
I've created a jupyter notebook on Google Colab for you to play with:

https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1fWxdD3xaZ-o-lR8nkoRWZNjbU312iQoC?usp=sharing

It needs to be integrated with projects like OwlRepo to be usable by end users.
Feel free to modify or use this code in your projects.
And let me know if you find any ways to improve it.