Measure Anything with a Camera and Software 208
Kevin C. Tofel writes "Using a simple concept, iPhotoMEASURE software can measure any objects you can take a picture of. Include a printout of a 7.5- or 15-inch square in the photo and the software can measure any distance or object in the pic to within 99.5% accuracy. Although geared towards contractors, there's any number of consumer usage scenarios as well. Enough to justify a $99 price tag? Jury's still out on that."
Re:Expensive (Score:4, Insightful)
No so expensive if you think about it in this way.
Unfortunately... (Score:5, Insightful)
There are already a number of laser rangefinders with compasses built-in that can do the same thing using simple trig.
Re:Expensive (Score:5, Insightful)
Damn cheap in my book. (Score:5, Insightful)
$99 is nothing. If it can save material purchased for a big job it will most likely pay for itself instantly, not counting all the time saved photographing and measuring that is now with manual processing afterward.
A more effective solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Just a thought.
Cost prohibitive?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, I could see almost every contractor getting into this...
I think people need to realize that this will be it's major market as surveying costs run in the $20~30/hour range for a single trained surveyor... this is skilled work. If companies can instead send out untrained (or barely trained) individuals at $10-$15/hr with much less time spent in calculation and only a $100 sunk cost into the software there is no reason they wouldn't choose this method. Very good news for contractors, bad for surveyors.
The price is almost low enough for consumers with a need to calculate distances relatively regularly to purchase this software.
I doubt it (Score:4, Insightful)
You'd have to stick known distance marks on everything in your picture.
Impossible (Score:2, Insightful)
This means two things, either you provide the software with more information or you need a calibration target for each plane of measurements in the image. For the latter case I could write the software in an afternoon (Excluding testing, writing a manual etc.), and already have my own research tool that does precisely that, so $99 is extremely steep. For the first case such a piece of software would not be 'easy to use' nor quick, though probably worth the $99 and your money back for mis-selling.
Sounds to me like that company's marketing team is overselling there product, and
Guess there's a lot of "trash." (Score:5, Insightful)
You do know that's impossible, right? I could use a laser interferometer, and determine the distance between two objects down to a fraction of a nanometer, and it would still not be "100% accurate."
I think that's the marketing dept. (Score:5, Insightful)
http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun/2007/02/ho
Looking at that photo, I'm not buying that it can measure all those distances from a single photo. I think there is some advertising hyperbole going on here. I get that you could measure all those distances and dimensions, using multiple photos -- one each of every flat surface, moving the target each time so it's the same distance from the camera as the surface being measured -- but I don't think it would work from a single photo.
The only way you could measure everything from a single photo like that, would be if the camera was stereoscopic, or had some other form of depth perception. Otherwise, as you noticed, there's no way for it to know that the window that's closer to the camera is not really bigger than the garage door that's further away.
Re:Not practical. (Score:3, Insightful)
Autocad. and other CAD programs can. you open the photo as a background or item and then measure one known item. write down the numbers from that . now measure all that you are after (ASSUMING you have good lenses and are not using a fisheye or wide andlge lens that will screw it up.)
and a simple calculator can do the rest for you.
I can give you all the dimensions in the photo within 5 minutes doing that. accuracy at the edges drops fast because most contractors have crappy point and shoot cameras (Yes your $500.00 point and shoot is crappy) and not a decent DSLR and a non zoom good lens.
Honestly I though every integrator and tech-savvy contractor knew how to do this. We estimate wire based on the same system. we go and take photos of the rooms with studs only and estimate with the photos and autocad.
This reminds of me of out-sourcing to India. (Score:1, Insightful)
No, this may be good news for truly talented surveyors. It seems a lot like the situation involving software developers and outsourcing to India. At first the situation will look bleak: some other people are offering the same services as the professionals, for only a fraction of the price. Soon enough, some managers will choose to go the cheaper route.
When it came to software, the industry eventually found out that Indian developers just plain couldn't put together a usable product. Often times, what they did produce was virutally useless. I've heard of situations where those off-shore developers took code from a number of open source projects with incompatible licenses, merged it all together in a basically non-functional monstrosity, and then expected to get paid for putting out that piece of pure shit.
Of course, this was a great thing for us North American and European developers. It made those of us with even just decent software development skills look great, when compared to the Indian developers. We could end up asking more, since the smarter managers learned our true value.
The same thing could happen for surveyors. After hiring a few untrained people to perform surveying using this device, it's no doubt that there would be major and costly problems. Building foundations would be unaligned, for instance, and professional surveyors would need to be called in to get things measured correctly. Now they'll be in a better position to demand more pay for the same service they were providing before, as the smart managers will realize that their other option will make major mistakes, and be even more costly than just paying a professional to do it correctly.
Some optics nitpicking. (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe they figured it out. (Score:1, Insightful)
Of all those comments, how many people actually tried it to see what it can do? Maybe the people who designed it figured a lot of this out and have some way of doing the calculations to make it work properly.
Just because 'YOU' can't see how to do it, does not mean the designers could not figure it out.
Because I can't figure out how to determine trajectory through the earth's gravitational pull, to the vacuum of outer space, calculating where mars will be several months (maybe years) in advance, then mars gravitational pull, to land a rover on the surface does not mean no one else has figured it out.
Perhaps the people at NASA are just smarter than I when it comes to that, like it is possible the designers of the software might just be smarter than those who never seen the software work but claims it can't work.
Just a thought.
Re:Not practical. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Damn cheap in my book. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I think that's the marketing dept. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Guess there's a lot of "trash." (Score:4, Insightful)
Really. So you understand the difference between an estimate and the craftsman doing the actual work then, right? The estimator's job is to be close enough that they come out just about right. Overages, OR underages, are bad. Yet, it's an _estimate_. This is a tool to get reasonable accuracy (so it's claimed) for doing estimates. No finish carpenter worth employing would use these measurements as a cutlist, that's not what it's for. This is so they can say "OK, homeowner, that's 527 square feet of siding, 240 feet of soffit and facia, 220 feet of gutter, and 12 square of shingles, so your cost estimate for materials is blah". Obviously nobody is going to go and cut the siding to 17' 4-11/16" based on something like this.