Getting Microsoft Azure credentials
!To sign up for Azure and obtain a key, visit https://portal.azure.com and either sign in using your Caltech Access email address/login, or create a new account. (Note: you will need to turn off browser security plugins such as Ad Block and uMatrix if you have them, or else the site will not work.) If you use your Caltech Access login, the Azure portal will redirect you to the regular Caltech Access login page and then (after you log in) back to the Microsoft Azure Dashboard https://portal.azure.com, from where you can create credentials. Otherwise, if you create a new account, after going through the various screens, you will also end up on the Dashboard page.
Before you create any service accounts, the Microsoft Azure Dashboard looks somewhat like this:
To create a service account, first click on the blue Create Resources button. This will lead to a page where you select resources that looks somewhat like this:
Click AI + Machine Learning; this will bring up a list of "Featured" options in the right-hand column (the things with the blue squares in the screen capture above), and there look for Computer Vision. Click on that one. The next page will look somewhat like this:
Click Start Free, then click through to fill out account information and identification. It will require a phone number and a credit card, but you won't be charged anything.
After all that's done, you will once again be put back to the Portal Dashboard. Click on Create Resources again, select AI + Machine Learning followed by Computer Vision again, and this time the following form will appear:
Fill in the blanks in this form. Give the service a name (for your own organizational purposes), keep the "Free Trial", and for the location, select the appropriate endpoint for your geographical location. For the pricing tier, select the F0 free option. For the "Resource group", click on the "Create new" link below the blank and create a new resource name – it can be anything that makes sense, such as "Handprint" or "OCR test" or whatever.
Finally, after the form is done, you should be able to click on the resource name in your Azure Dashboard. This should lead to a page that looks somewhat like this:
Make note of the first part of the endpoint URI shown under the Section 2 heading. (In this example, it's "https://westus.api.cognitive.microsoft.com" – ignore the rest of the URL.) Click on the Keys link in Section 1. The key will be a string such as "18de248475134eb49ae4a4e94b93461c". The next page will provide two keys. You can copy either key, and the endpoint URI, and use them in the JSON file used for the Microsoft credentials file described in the instructions for installing Handprint.
