How to make this type of app

[charlieb10]

Hi

I have an idea for an app where you can take a photo of some shoes and then the app will tell you the name of them and where you can buy them from. This will need a massive photo database, i understand, but is there any software that I can use to help me make this?

Thanks

Charlie

 

[AdrianK]

So basically you want to build Google Goggles for shoes? The algorithm used to analyse an image from the camera and relate it to another image would take an immense amount of man power to create, however there may engines for such a task but they would be *extremely* expensive to license.

I don't know what you're coding experience is, but I highly doubt you'd be able to do this yourself.

 

[psonice]

Yeah, this would be a *major* challenge for the most hardcore devs. If you're seriously into coding + mathematics, all I can say is go start reading a big pile of white papers on image recognition.

If not, you'll need to access some 3rd party image recognition service. There's a few of them around I think. But you'll be limited by their license agreement - if they offer it for free, there will likely be major restrictions (like your app can't be commercial and you can't sell stuff using it) or you'll be paying for access.

 

[robbieduncan]

Been watching The Big Bang Theory by any chance?

 

[mroddjob]

Been watching The Big Bang Theory by any chance?

+1, took me a minute to remember which show I'd heard it from. Actually quite a good idea. But a "Surprisingly Helpful Equation-Linked Differential Optimized Numerator" would be awesome.

 

[idonotliketostu]

OpenCV Frameworks to process images, and perhaps Haarcascade databases to ID each shoe.

The cpu on the iphone takes a couple seconds to run ONE database for an image. You need to build a server, upload pics to server, process, and download info from server to phone.

this would be a very niche app, however if you were to expand from just shoes to other things, then you've got something useful, oh wait that's google goggles... lol