Just a quick question on the iphone technology within this business card reader
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8z6pcxdrPo
as we can see this video allows users to take a photo of a business card, i have an idea where i would take a photo of some text , and that photo could then be turned into text on the iphone. how would i be able to implement this using the iOS API ?
cheers guys
The camera stuff is all standard-- use the UIImagePickerController for this.
Text recognition (OCR) is not a built in part of the iOS API, though, so that part really isn't trivial. There are multiple open-source projects that can handle this sort of thing if you want to go after them.
Tesseract is an older but possibly viable one. Check out this post which has info on cross compiling it for iOS.
Other users here might have more current recommendations.
Related
I am thinking of building a camera application - with the ability to do image processing (adjust contrast, apply different image filters) while you are taking picture or after the pictures has taken.
The app will also have the ability of drag and drop icons.
At the end you are able to export the edited images either to the camera roll or app memory.
There is already many apps out there like this. (Line Camera) etc...
Just wondering what is the best way to build such app.
Can I build the app purely with Objective C ios sdk? or do i need to build it with C++/cocos2d, etc...
Thanks for your help!
Your question is very broad, so here is a broad answer...
Accessing the camera/photo library
First you'll need to access the camera using UIImagePickerController to either take a new photo or grab one from your photo library. You can read up on how to accomplish this here: Camera Programming Topics for iOS
Image Manipulation
AviarySDK has much of this already built for you. Very easy to set up and use in your apps. You can download their sample app for free in the app store if you want to see what it can do. Check it out here: http://aviary.com/
Alternatively, read up on Core Image if you'd like to avoid third-party libraries. See Core Image Programming Guide for more information.
There is absolutely no need for cocos2d which is a game engine.
You can accomplish everything you mentioned using only Objective-C.
If you want real-time effects you will need to dive into OpenGL. you can use GLKit if you target iOS 5 and above.
I've designed the User Interface of an iPhone app and I wish to show an online demo of that consisting for the moment of a series of static images representing the main steps of the app.
According to you what is the best way to do this simulation?
You know, something like a series of single webpage, optimized for mobile, containing a single image linking to the next step, but I was wondering if exists a much elegant and sophisticated solution, with a transition effect for example or other features.
I hope I was clear enough :)
Any help will be sincerely appreciated.
Thanks in advance for your attention.
This sounds like a good use for Briefs Briefs App Website. This pretty much allows you to create an interface and step through it as if it were an application. I believe you'll need to have a developer account to run the app that will read the brief on your phone (since it wasn't able to be released in the app store).
An alternative to static images would be to make a video. I use the iShowU video screen capture tool and set it to record the iPhone/iPad simulator window. I then run through the screens, type inputs, etc. In addition to recording the video, the program records my voice as I narrate the app's features.
As to transition effects, the video will capture whatever transition animations are in your program.
In the end you have a video that you could give your user, put on YouTube, or whatever.
You can do this easily and for free on AppDemoStore. You just have to upload the app screenshots and then add hotspots which are used for the navigation through the demo.
AppDemoStore offers also the sophisticated features you are asking for:
iPhone specific transition effects such as slide up/down/left/right, fade and flip
gestures icons for the hotspots
text boxes and callouts
multiple hotspots on a screen in order to create a simulation of the app (and not just a linear demo)
Here's a sample demo: http://www.appdemostore.com/demo?id=1699008
Moreover, the demos created on AppDemoStore run in any browser and mobile device and can be embedded in your webpage or blog (like you do it with a YouTube video). With the FREE account, you can create up to 10 demos with unlimited screenshots and all the features specified above.
Regards,
Daniel
I am developing a cocos2d app.
It's almost completed but now I want to record the activities of my app as a video file, including sound produced by the app.
How can I implement this?
Anybody can help me.
Please suggest a way to implement this.
Thanks in advance.
The question isn't new, but since it isn't answered I thought I'd pitch in:
We provide an SDK called "Everyplay" that allows you to do exactly what you're looking for. It's free to use, and is lightweight.
We provide out-of-the-box integrations for Unity3D, cocos2d (1.x, 2.x), cocos2d-x, and you can of course integrate to a custom OpenGL-based game engine.
The documentation is available at https://developers.everyplay.com/doc
The documentation contains an example app key to use when developing, but you can of course sign up for your own client key at https://developers.everyplay.com/
There are many options - and the fact that your app is cocos2d doesn't matter much.
iSimulate works well. You can actually play the app on your device and record the gameplay as well as the touch events. This is important if you want to show user interaction in your app. You run the app in the simulator but you control it from your device.
If you just want to record the app interaction without caring about showing users the touch events, you can use Screenflow or Jing or some other recording software. I used to use Jing (free) but Screenflow works better for me and it also lets you create more advanced video like a trailer with effects. edit You should be able to capture touch events through the simulator with Screenflow too. You can choose to show them or not. And can use different indicators for those events.
Search on google for mac or iphone recording software. There are many options. I had the best experience with Screenflow because I wanted to make a trailer and gameplay video.
I'm developing similar application which allow user record the activity within cocos2d-x activity.
I'm using screen capture method and then combine it using FFMPEG. The performance wasn't too good thought but is the easiest way to achieve.
I'm working on an iPhone App that's HTML5/JS displayed in a single UI Webview. I'd like to add photo upload capabilities, and I'm wondering what the best approach would be to extend the iPhone app with the necessary classes to pick a photo and upload via an API. I'd also like to trigger the display of the photo picker via JS if that's possible.
I know it's possible to use a framework like PhoneGap to do this, but I don't want to migrate the whole app to a new framework yet. Also, sorry for the "how to" type question - I normally ask about specific problems after I've exhausted my efforts, but I'm pretty new to Objective C, so I'd appreciate some guidance, even if it's just a simple design explanation.
the image picker (UIImagePicker) is fairly straightforward to work with: http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/uikit/reference/UIImagePickerController_Class/UIImagePickerController/UIImagePickerController.html
and for an API, are you sending it to an existing system? or creating your own. You just need to craft an NSMutableURLRequest with POSTED data in a multi-part format, and then handle the image portion appropriately in your server.
this might help: upload image from iPhone application
I want to make a small app that displays a PDF, presenting zoom-able single pages with a previous-next page function.
The Core Graphics API is pretty much the same in Cocoa and Cocoa touch. Read up on CGPDFDocument, it should provide you with everything you will need to render PDF pages. You won't need to read the PDF spec or use a library to parse PDF files directly. You will probably to learn more about Core Graphics / Quartz 2D / etc. to understand how to use those functions inside of a Cocoa app.
Based on the gradually evolving Apple policy of rejecting application submissions that duplicate functionality already on the iPhone I would worry about spending too much time even as a newbie on something that is part of the core iPhone feature-set.
This is pretty trivial. The CGPDFDocument functions will allow you to do anything you'd want to do with a PDF file.
The iPhone and iPod touch can view PDFs already, as one of the TV adverts in the UK shows an email with a .pdf attachment (of swimming lessons) being viewed. It can also view .doc, .xls, and so on, so if he is creating a viewer type application then supporting those as well could be a nice feature addition later on.
This means there is a PDF framework on these devices that you will need to access. Presumably Apple can provide support here if he is a paid up developer. Syncing the PDFs to the device is the actual real difficulty, as this isn't supported by iTunes. I assume that you would need to write a network based synchronisation tool, or have an online cloud for holding people's PDFs.
The device doesn't support Flash, so using PDF to Flash conversion tools will not work.
I found this HTML5 framework that should work on an iPad http://bakerframework.com/
but I didn't test it yet.