Slashdot Mirror
Measure Anything with a Camera and Software
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."
I dunno. I work as an engineer and I'm thinking something like this could be really useful.
No matter how many times you go out to a job site to measure and verify things, something always comes up that requires you to go back. For this reason, we take a lot of pictures in hopes that the camera will catch something we might not be looking for at the time.
I can't begin to count how many times I've counted bricks in those pictures to estimate distances. If I had software that could look at the image and provide measurements with 99.5% accuracy, that would be extremely useful. At $99 it would probably pay for itself after three or four uses just on time saved going back out to the site.
=Smidge=
All it does is count pixels. Take the picture with the known size block in it, then count how many pixels the block takes up: that's your dots per inch -- for objects the same distance away as the known size image. I read somewhere that the Japanese (I think) used to do this at musical instrument trade shows, by wearing a 1 cm square tie tack and taking photos of each other holding instruments. They could get the dimensions of the instrument from the photos that way, and make great cheap knock-offs.