
Show HN: Identify mushrooms from pictures - pingou
http://champignouf.com
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mgberlin
I'm not going to tell you how to live your life, but maybe you should have
some sort of disclaimer: "not responsible for accidentally identifying death
caps as chantarelles."

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kyledrake
I'm going to tell you how to live your life, please put up a disclaimer.

This is the first example I've ever seen of an image classifier that could
kill someone if it makes a mistake.

You may also want to consider listing all percentages and classification
types, instead of just the highest match (if you don't do this yet).

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zitterbewegung
I pivoted my idea on an allergen identification system after hearing the same
thing from people on HN.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14637584](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14637584)

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b0rsuk
I would use a similar app for something inconsequential, like bird voices.
However, mushrooms are often identified to determine whether they can be
eaten. The penalty for mistake may be death. So I think I'll pass.

For the record, I've uploaded a picture of an aardvark: """I think it's:
Panaeolus acuminatus Or perhaps Psilocybe zapotecorum , Coprinopsis variegata
, Hygrocybe singeri , or coprinellus sect micacei or something totally
different!"""

I think it's trying too hard.

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novia
I uploaded a picture of Lactarius indigo, one of the safest mushrooms to eat
because it pretty much doesn't look like any other type of mushroom. (The
trade-off for this certainty is that it is pretty bland tasting.) It is very
difficult for a human to misidentify it. The results are below:

 _I think it 's: Laccaria amethystina_

 _Or perhaps Russula cyanoxantha , Lactarius indigo , cortinarius iodes , or
Cortinarius alboviolaceus_

So, the right ID is in the list, but it's not the #1 guess. This could be
useful for trained mushroom hunters who just want to narrow down the
possibilities to check up on. I definitely would not trust an amateur with it
though!

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pingou
OP here. It knows more than 500 species, results range from terrible to ok,
but I will work on improving that, and add more information about each
mushroom (like species that look alike but are not edible). Nobody should use
it to know if a mushroom is safe to eat anyway, probably I'll add even more
warnings as it may not be obvious enough.

~~~
surement
If you know which are unsafe, you could have a threshold confidence, say the
algorithm classifies one as shiitake with 90% probability but some unsafe
mushroom at >40% probability (or some percentage that makes sense), it could
say, "looks like this is a shiitake, but careful it could be <unsafe
mushroom>, here's some pictures and info about <unsafe mushroom>."

~~~
sliverstorm
Yeah, really the chief use for an app like this would probably wind up as,
_how confident are you that this mushroom will not kill me_ which is a
slightly different problem.

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briga
I'm no mycologist, but for an accurate identification of mushrooms often spore
prints are needed. Also the color and shape can vary wildly over a few days,
which makes this more tricky than a typical visual classification problem.

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dpatrick86
Are you working with or have you considered working with the folk at
mushroomobserver.org? They have an absolutely enormous dataset. Hundreds of
thousands of cataloged observations!

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wazari972
Nice name ;-) For those not speaking familiar french, pignouf is something
like dumb-ass (and champi is champignon, mushroom)

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jfries
What happens when this mislabels a poisoneous mushroom as something harmless?
Where lies the responsibility? Can this app be used safely?

Imo it's quite different than a printed guide, because the app tells you what
you're looking at instead of forcing you to interpret that by yourself like
the printed guide does.

Seems especially tricky for users that don't understand that there will be
tons of misclassifications with this kind of tech.

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blueadept111
Even a mushroom expert can't identify an arbitrary mushroom from one photo.
The reason is: either the photo reveals the surface features of the cap or the
gill/hymenium features but not both. Same goes for the cap/stipe and any
important underground features, like a volva (important for identifying many
poisonous mushrooms). So...

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iamwil
Did you use a CNN to identify the mushrooms? (I assume so). Did you run into
problems deploying the CNN to production? How do you intend to update it given
feedback from your users, and the photos they submit?

~~~
pingou
I did use a CNN, but didn't really run into problems for that. I do not intend
to use user submitted pictures, as I would have no idea myself what they truly
are, if it's what you meant.

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illegal_in_ca
So I did a Google image search for "poisonous mushrooms" and it gave me a
picture of "Galerina marginata" from Encyclopeadia Britannica[0].

According to the app: _I think it 's: Psilocybe zapotecorum Or perhaps
Psilocybe subtropicalis , Psathyrella piluliformis , Psathyrella longistriata
, or Kuehneromyces lignicola or something totally different!

Warning!!! Many mushrooms look alike and many are toxic! Champignouf makes a
lot of mistakes! Do not eat mushrooms without being sure they are edible, you
could die!_

Thanks, but not helpful.

[0] [https://www.britannica.com/list/7-of-the-worlds-most-
poisono...](https://www.britannica.com/list/7-of-the-worlds-most-poisonous-
mushrooms)

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donohoe
For the landing page I'd address the images used to link to App Store and
Google Play. You're using images that are 2000 by 600px wide, but resized down
to 500 x 50px... and the proportions are off. Should be an easy fix.

~~~
pingou
Thank you for your comment, yes I know I did it in a very dirty way, I don't
really care about the landing page actually, more about the apps themselves as
I'm a mobile developer.

I'd be curious to see how much traffic can a landing page bring though.

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paulkrush
Be nice if you showed the uploaded picture and displayed confidence.

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mazelife
I uploaded a picture I took of an Amanita flavoconia, and it correctly
identified it as the #1 choice. The mushroom wasn't particularly well visually
isolated in the photo either, it had sprung up among a bunch of moss and twigs
and only occupied about a quarter of the frame, so I found this fairly
impressive.

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pazimzadeh
This would be great if paired with a portable DNA sequencing device like those
from Oxford nanowire:
[https://nanoporetech.com/products/smidgion](https://nanoporetech.com/products/smidgion)

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zafka
Is there a catalogue of what it knows? It would be nice to see what is already
there.

~~~
pingou
No, not yet, but good idea!

~~~
zafka
Then add spore prints and we will really have something!

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dnt404-1
I uploaded a picture of my math assignment, and it showed a recommendation of
mushroom!! I am not sure if one should trust this to actually figure out if a
mushroom is edible or not.

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j88439h84
Please include example images from an excluded test set for demonstration. I'd
rather not have to google for pictures, download one, upload it, ...

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overcast
Neat idea, however I can't even pronounce the name.

I've actually got a pretty solid name for you unregistered, but I'm not
posting it publicly.

~~~
simlevesque
\ʃɑ̃.pi.ɲɔuf\

~~~
evincarofautumn
Or /ʃɑ̃.pi.ɲuf/, which I guess you could approximate in English as “shom-peen-
yoof”.

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simlevesque
Bien joué !

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dallamaneni
Here is another tool that identifies many other things
[http://imageidentify.com/](http://imageidentify.com/)

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overcast
Well, first example was a complete failure.

[https://www.imageidentify.com/result/1mvakwaegdqtn](https://www.imageidentify.com/result/1mvakwaegdqtn)

