

Google Vision APIs for Android provide face detection and barcode scanning - fitzwatermellow
https://developers.google.com/vision/?hl=en

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lnanek2
Would be nice if they provided more information about their implementation. I
currently pay for a barcode API that doesn't have the dumb binary off/on pixel
logic of the free version of zxing almost everyone else uses. It's just better
UX for users if their bar codes can be recognized even with out of focus
images, for example. There's nothing on this site about if the Google library
is better or worse than popular open source offerings, however.

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nly
Last I looked, Clef, who rely on barcode scanning as the basis for their
entire product, were using ZBar[0] on Android. It's a C library. I think it's
unmaintained these days though. No commits on sourceforge for 3 years.

[0]
[http://zbar.sourceforge.net/index.html](http://zbar.sourceforge.net/index.html)

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waynenilsen
I wish this could be used in a broader context without involving Android.

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dangerboysteve
What is the performance of the barcode scanning? The commercial Scandit
crossplatform lib is amazing (see videos) www.scandit.com

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Benjamin_Dobell
Wait... what? Why is this part of the Google APIs framework (closed source)
and not part of the Android Open Source Project?

Here we go, folks.

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btian
Because this is higher level in terms of functionality than OS. Android API
lets you access hardware, e.g., get a photo from camera, establish a network
connection.

Processing data from hardware is higher level.

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Benjamin_Dobell
I didn't say make it part of the OS, I said part of the Android Open Source
Project. The platform SDK (applications, services, UI, media playback,
notifications etc. etc.) and the support library are both extremely high level
and part of AOSP.

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kizza
Yeah, it should really be open source. For face detection, it's really a
closed source replacement for what's been in Android from the start:
[http://developer.android.com/reference/android/media/FaceDet...](http://developer.android.com/reference/android/media/FaceDetector.html)

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jakozaur
Good direction.

I wonder how it compares to using OpenCV other on top of much nicer API and
doing everything yourself.

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cpcat
i think this only works on snapdragon processors with fastcv. i tested this on
snapdragon dev kits 2 years ago.

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vladtaltos
any information about licensing the API ? cost-wise ? I couldn't find it in
the site

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lorenzhs
I'm pretty sure processing happens on the device, it's not a web API. No cost.

