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Idea for an Android App...

kmharish

Lurker
Hey guys, I'm new here. I joined primarily because I had an idea for an Android App & I want to know whether it's feasible & what challenges might be involved. I want to build an App that can tell you the name of any building around you. You simply launch this App which in turn will launch the Camera App & you point your mobile towards the building to get its name on your screen.

This is how I think it could be implemented: Part 1 is getting the GPS co-ordinates of the building that you're looking at. For that, 1st we get the mobile phone's GPS co-ordinates using its in-built GPS receiver. Then we find out the distance & direction of the building from the mobile & get its GPS co-ordinates. Part 2 is finding out what exists at those co-ordinates. This is the hard part & I would like you guys to help. I'm thinking we could use Google Maps or pre-loaded maps or something like that.

This App is a bit similar to Google Goggles, but Goggles is dependant on a huge database of images. I don't want that. Instead it could depend on some user contributed database like Google Maps. Also, I found an App called Andrometer (highwaynorthinteractive.com) that can find your distance from any building by making you stand at 2 points A & B 20 meters apart, with A, B & the building forming a triangle. Another distance finding logic that I thought of is that you make the user walk towards the target keeping the camera steady & get the distance by measuring the magnification of the image that the camera sees.

I'd like to know if anyone of you has a better idea for finding distance & your suggestions for Part 2 of the logic. Also, can anyone explain to me how Andrometer works exactly.
 
Hey guys, I'm new here. I joined primarily because I had an idea for an Android App & I want to know whether it's feasible & what challenges might be involved. I want to build an App that can tell you the name of any building around you. You simply launch this App which in turn will launch the Camera App & you point your mobile towards the building to get its name on your screen.

This is how I think it could be implemented: Part 1 is getting the GPS co-ordinates of the building that you're looking at. For that, 1st we get the mobile phone's GPS co-ordinates using its in-built GPS receiver. Then we find out the distance & direction of the building from the mobile & get its GPS co-ordinates. Part 2 is finding out what exists at those co-ordinates. This is the hard part & I would like you guys to help. I'm thinking we could use Google Maps or pre-loaded maps or something like that.

This App is a bit similar to Google Goggles, but Goggles is dependant on a huge database of images. I don't want that. Instead it could depend on some user contributed database like Google Maps. Also, I found an App called Andrometer (highwaynorthinteractive.com) that can find your distance from any building by making you stand at 2 points A & B 20 meters apart, with A, B & the building forming a triangle. Another distance finding logic that I thought of is that you make the user walk towards the target keeping the camera steady & get the distance by measuring the magnification of the image that the camera sees.

I'd like to know if anyone of you has a better idea for finding distance & your suggestions for Part 2 of the logic. Also, can anyone explain to me how Andrometer works exactly.

Can't addresses be incorrect though? If you searched my address on Google Maps, you would see a marker on a house that isn't mine. I'm not sure how that would affect your idea though.
 
I'm not searching for any address in Google Maps. I'll get a Google Maps image of the GPS co-ordinates that I just calculated & then somehow extract the text from around there.
 
Hai this is Rahul,
Can you please guide me how can we calculate the distance and direction of the building from the mobile and get the GPS co-ordinates of that building. I have the GPS co-ordinates of the mobile?
 
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