TADHack London, Niall Roche & Daniel Fozzati, CiscoSpark. Capture text using phone camera and sending to a Spark room. Remote support.

1. SEND WHAT YOU SEE
Twitter: @niallroche

2. “ For those time when you ‘have’ to be there to understand it ”
@niallroche

3. USES
• For quickly sending messages without the user needing to type in text that is in
front of them
• can be useful for auditing by storing text sent rather than just an audio stream
of words
• Users with Disabilities
• Remote Support & Technical Support
• from field engineers to fixing issues for family members ;-)
• Low bandwidth scenarios video not possible, images too large audio quality
poor
• Translation issues for foreign text
@niallroche

4. OPERATION
• Text Recongnition
• Place text in the ‘identify’ region of screen
• Choose Focus on area
• Identify Text (Aquire - Target - Compare to dictionary)
• Display Text in ‘text display’ region of screen
• User flicks the selected text to send to a spark message room (send all
option TBD)
• Optional Text to speech on identified text and received messages (TBD)
so no need to leave text capture screen
@niallroche

5. ARCHITECTURE
Spark
Camera
Capture
(Vuforia)
Spark
Networking
Android
Text
Recognition
Text Display
HTTPS
Send Message
Get Messages (TBD)
Us
er
1
xa
sd
sa
d
User 1 User 2
@niallroche

6. EXTENSIONS
• Speech for incoming messages, good for hands free support if
audio quality poor
• Language translation
• Symbol translation - warning labels etc
• Object recognition - identify machine/part models send meter
readings for diagnosis of issues
• Capture entire image from camera and send to message room
• send instructions to someone fixing the machine
@niallroche

7. ISSUES
• Spark Java API is not Android compatible (even with
some hacking)
• Required building integration from scratch
• General configuration and environment issues as Image
Capture required use of Android NDK and libraries and
Vuforia API
• OpenCV is an alternative but Vuforia had better object
and text recognition
@niallroche

8. Team: DEMONSTRABLE LABS
Niall Roche
from
with support from
The Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship - UCL
@niallroche