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Would be a cool app project. "Scan" each label as you put it in your cart, and see if it rejects it or not
by reustle 11y ago
Would be a cool app project. "Scan" each label as you put it in your cart, and see if it rejects it or not
- toomuchtodo 11y agoThe problem is, the ingredients can change without the UPC code changing. You would need manufacturers to purchase and use unique UPC codes for each version of their food formulations.
- gkop 11y agoNeither parent nor grandparent references UPC. Grandparent references the list of ingredients.
- toomuchtodo 11y agoSorry about that! I didn't assume someone would suggest having a mobile device OCR an ingredients label, versus looking up a UPC code tied to an ingredients list and groking for your allergies. One is easy, the other is hard.
- cbhl 11y agoOCR isn't that hard, just expensive. You do a first pass with an algorithm, and then use Mechanical Turk to correct for errors.
- khedoros 11y ago> One is easy, the other is hard. There are APIs and libraries for OCR, so that might not be so bad (even on a mobile device). A low-end phone is faster than the first PCs I did OCR on anyhow, and about 20 years more research has gone into algorithms.
- bduerst 11y agoYou wouldn't even need to scan labels per se, you could just take a picture of the box and identify the food item that is the largest in the FOV. If your ingredients data is getting stale, you could reward users with coupons for stale-data items, so some users will take pictures of the ingredients list (kind of a 'bounty' list). You could do this for new items too - e.g. a popup after the picture is taken saying you can get $0.50 off if you take a picture of the UPC and ingredients list. Do a visual diff on the ingredients photo to see if the they have changed, and if so, OCR it to the database.
- pyre 11y agoDo the manufacturers change the UPC code when they update the ingredient lists? I doubt it. It's still technically the same item (and probably the same internal SKU too).
- bduerst 11y agoNope, but for new items in the database or if packaging changes drastically, you would need the UPC to join the update with previous data.