

Ask HN: Evaluate my app idea - aspired

Simple idea; Automagically capture data from LCD of Health/Fitness machine.<p>Mockup Demo: http://www.vimeo.com/15179861<p>You just finished your workout on Treadmill or done with your health test on Glucose meter etc. You pull out your Iphone, start TrakBug
App, select machine you just used, and then point camera towards LCD of machine. TrakBug reads data from LCD using image recognition. To handle
non-LCD cases, Trakbug allows you to enter data manually.<p>App Goals:<p>-Automate capture data from variety of health/fitness devices<p>–Analyze data for trends<p>-Share data<p>Questions:<p>-Would this be a useful app?<p>-Do you think there is a market for this?<p>-Who would be most benefited from this app?<p>-What feature am I missing?<p>Thanks for the feedback!
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lien
There's a huge market for this, and devices like this are already on the
market based on Wi-Fi, rather than image recognition. I know ICON fitness made
an accessory last year that interface to standard fitness equipments, and
allows you to share data with your Facebook friends.

this would be a really useful app if it's based on image recognition, but the
question here is does it work? to do this, you would have to take an image,
send it back to your server for computation, and pass information back to the
user. you'd have to periodically feed images to your server - would it be
every second? or 5 seconds? it'll be quite a CPU-intensive task, so image
recognition may not be the answer if fitness companies out there are already
doing it Wi-Fi.

wrt to the use model alone, if you make the user hold the device while they're
exercising, no one would do that. it'd be too awkward.

And i wouldn't think about allow users to entering data manually.

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HardyLeung
I think the OP mentioned that the snapshot is taken at the end of the
exercise, basically to capture the statistics.

Even the image recognition part is not that difficult, assuming simple LCD
display. The problem is whether they are able to handle the universe of
exercise machines (or at least say 95% of exercise machines). One possibility
is to ask users to submit image and if their machines are not found, ask for
their help to take a few snapshots, etc. Given them a badge so they can brag
about it (and even help spread the word).

In addition, I'm worried that the type of data provided is highly inconsistent
amount machines. Can the OP easily combine incomplete information from
different types of exercise machines?

If somehow the OP can manage this, I think it would be a great app, and yes,
people are willing to pay money for this app.

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aspire007
We got a strong image processing team and have figured out our core image
processing algorithm. Our algo should be able to handle 80-90% of LCDs with
ease.

If user is using a machine for first time, he has three options, (1) Select
one of machines listed in app (2) User creates a machine profile (as shown in
video link) (3) Search & download from server where we will continue to add
new machine profile & also allow users to post their created machine profile

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jonewalker
I have not done thorough research, but based on what i feel\know, i have
following opinion/views.

1\. Analytic part : It should not be hard to implement a simple application to
generate good figure, pie charts, etc. (much easier than screen/data reading
part)

2\. Image processing as sole innovation. : Application will solely be based on
it as prime innovation/challenge, but that is not so bad thing. Other
solutions will be based on wi-fi, blue-tooth, usb, etc and they will have
their own limitations (configuring, downloading, connecting etc). Ease of use
may decide the winner. Only if all fitness equipment manufactrs. join and
develop a universal application targetting large number of machine to connect
using blue-tooth, wi-fi etc, then it may be better solution. I donot see this
thing happening very soon. (span of 5 years, my estimate). In this time, this
application (based on image processing), if it can establish itself, it may
possibly be hard to replace it. It would have already created customer base
for itself.

3\. Application will target low income group. May not be true. If application
works as i see it should, i feel it may be used by all groups.

