What it does
Monitors a region of your screen while mining in Star Citizen, reads the RS signature
number via OCR, and identifies the material and concentration level in real time.
The overlay can run on any device on your local network — a second monitor, tablet,
phone, or a separate PC.
Quick start
1
Run install.bat (once only)
Installs Python dependencies. EasyOCR downloads ~500MB of model files on first run — this is normal.
2
Run start.bat
Launches the scanner and opens this overlay automatically. Look for the Space Wangers icon in your system tray.
3
Go to the Calibrate tab
Select the monitor running Star Citizen, click Refresh Preview, then click and drag on the screenshot to draw a box around the RS signature number in your mining HUD.
4
Click Apply Region
Saves the region to the scanner. Refresh Preview again to confirm the magenta box is sitting tight over the number.
5
Head into the belt and start scanning
Switch to the Scanner tab and click Enable Scan. Point your Ping at a rock — the material and tier will appear automatically.
The Scanner tab
The main display. Shows the current matched material with tier badge, concentration level,
and raw signature value. Scan history lists the last 15 results.
Enable / Pause Scan
Toggles active scanning on and off. Pause when not mining to avoid spurious reads.
Quit Scanner
Shuts down the scanner process on the gaming PC entirely.
Tier badges
S (red) = exceptional, A (orange) = excellent, B (yellow) = good, C (green) = average, D (blue) = common, E (grey) = poor, RMC (purple) = salvageable debris.
The Reference tab
The full material database. You can add, edit, and delete entries — useful when CIG add
new minerals or you discover updated signature values. Click Save Changes to push updates
to the scanner live without restarting. Reset to Defaults wipes any changes back to the
built-in table.
Surface minerals (Atacamite, Granite, etc.) require a ground
vehicle to mine and are tagged SURFACE in the type column.
The Calibrate tab
Everything needed to position the scanner's capture region over the signature number
in your HUD.
Scanner Connection
Enter your scanner PC's IP and port (default 5000). Click Local for same-machine use.
Display / Monitor
Select which screen Star Citizen is running on. Detected automatically on connect.
Capture Region
The pixel coordinates of the box the scanner reads. Edit manually or draw on the preview.
Drag to draw
After loading a preview, click and drag directly on the screenshot to draw the region. The coordinate fields update automatically — click Apply Region to save.
OCR Diagnostics
Expand this section to enable debug frame saving. Each OCR attempt saves a preprocessed image to debug_frames/ — useful for tuning but will fill disk quickly. Disable after use.
Using from another device
The overlay works from any device on your local network — handy for a secondary
monitor, iMac, tablet, or phone.
1
Find your Windows PC's IP: open Command Prompt and type ipconfig. Note the IPv4 address.
2
Open Windows Firewall and allow port 5000 inbound (TCP).
3
Copy overlay.html to the other device and open it, then enter the gaming PC's IP in the connection field on the Calibrate tab.
Tray icon
When running normally, the scanner minimises to the system tray rather than showing
a console window. Right-click the tray icon for quick access to Start/Stop scanning,
Open Overlay, and Quit. The icon border turns green when actively scanning.
Troubleshooting
Overlay shows OFFLINE
Make sure scanner.py is running. Check Windows Firewall isn't blocking port 5000.
Erratic / wrong reads
Tighten the capture region so the box sits snugly around just the signature number. Use OCR Diagnostics to see what the scanner is working with.
Slow startup
EasyOCR loads its neural net model on first launch (~10–15 seconds). Subsequent starts are faster once cached.
EasyOCR not found
Run install.bat again.
Model download on first run
EasyOCR downloads ~100MB of model files to %USERPROFILE%\.EasyOCR\ — this happens once per machine and is cached.
You're in the right place for a spot of Space Wanging.
