4 ms·

Hi, there! I'm one of the project managers at CountThings, I'll try to respond to comments here but I guess you can AMA.

kasperni 5y ago
First, this looks amazing. I have a couple of very specific questions. Would it be able to count diamonds? I'm just wondering because the refraction of diamonds is very high. Would it be able to count items located inside clear zip lock bags? Also can it do any kind of categorization of the items? For example, 10 of type X, 20 of type Y?
- joosters 5y ago
  There's a 'raw diamonds' counting template listed on https://countthings.com/en/counting-templates https://countthings.com/en/counting-templates The categorization is an interesting question - those templates all seem to be of similar items.
- morsanu 5y ago
  Yes, we should be able to count them if they are visible in the picture. Please email our support with a couple of sample images. We are also doing classification for some of our templates/clients.
joosters 5y ago
How accurate is the counting? For examples like the case study, I presume your customers will want very close to 100% accuracy, but many other use cases will only need rough numbers. How do you calibrate / verify your app?
- morsanu 5y ago
  For most of our clients, we get to 100% accuracy. For some more difficult scenarios, a lower accuracy is ok for estimations (e.g. estimating the crop in agriculture). It's also super easy to correct mistakes or to add items that are not visible in the image.
  - BorisTheBrave 5y ago
    You don't mean 100% accuracy, that means mistakes are impossible. Perhaps your error rate is very rare, but it's a bit concerning you don't attempt to quantify it.
    - leucineleprec0n 5y ago
      Suppose it depends on which part of the chain he attributes error, plausible lighting or poor positioning - anything that is an employee duty - does throw it off and then they scrub it. But yeah. Still.
    - jmmcd 5y ago
      I disagree. If we consider a single customer with a particular application, we probably imagine an iterative process like this: the customer supplies some sample images, the system gets a few wrong, they add special cases, fine-tune the hyperparameters, whatever, and after all this they literally get 100% on the customer's holdout data. If that happens for several customers then the GP statement is justified (no other number is possible for these customers). Possibly you're thinking of a single error rate across all customers? For other customers, as stated, it's not 100%. But taking an average across multiple customers is not meaningful when some are counting pearls and some are counting crops.
- matsemann 5y ago
  You have to take into account the error rate of human counting when making the comparison. I can also imagine the new process have other benefits. Like before, if a customer complained of getting fewer than ordered pearls, they would probably have to acknowledge that as a counting error on their side but not knowing. Now they have a picture/data to refer back to. At least that's how it is where I work; the automation leads to reduced errors, and when they happen the amount of data makes it easier to track where it went wrong.
- dintech 5y ago
  One thing to consider is that humans don't have 100% accuracy for large numbers of things.
- klyrs 5y ago
  The article shows a photo with the pearls highlighted with circles. I'm generally skeptical of AI, but this system produces a certificate that a human can verify much faster than doing the work themselves. IMO, that's the right way to do it. You can trust the system 99% of the time, and check a random 1% by eye every day. Or, you can keep a human fully in the loop and still save time (though, if the error rate is too low, humans will get bored)
zerovar 5y ago
Probably a very naïve question but, how did you know/find out that an app to count things could be a profitable business?
- morsanu 5y ago
  No, it's actually a pretty good question. We are a custom ML & computer vision software company and about 7 years ago we got several requests in a short time period for counting items in images. We thought it was a great idea for a product and kind of started our journey as an internal startup.
  - dumb1224 5y ago
    Depends on the industry as well. Cell counting is a huge part of life science research and it's a well established business in lab-based pipelines (integral part of commercial solutions). However if you try to enter the realm of clinical field such as histology and pathology assistive technology it suddenly becomes tricky. Same with innovative diagnostic tools. You need clinical trials for those.
Noumenon72 5y ago
I just wanted to say that if you can count particles of things in microscope images, you can probably make great inroads at companies that do drug testing, like Covance or PPD in America. They're paying chemists to circle blobs on paper and count them. I bet they'd even appreciate someone to count their circles!
- morsanu 5y ago
  Thanks for the idea. Getting the app in front of companies that need it is one of our challenges.
- gield 5y ago
  The company I work at did a project like this where the goal was counting of different types of bacterial colony forming units (CFUs) that were cultured in Petri dishes [0]. We presented our results at ESANN [1]. [0] https://radix.ai/cases/gsk-vaccine-development https://radix.ai/cases/gsk-vaccine-development [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.05337 https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.05337
malpighien 5y ago
Is not it something anyone can do for free using image J with a bit of scripting.
- danielheath 5y ago
  Is this a bad time to remind HN of that famous comment on the founding of dropbox?
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    Technically many could do what dropbox did to create a similiar product when they were part of yc class. Many HN have a personal dropbox setup they made themselves. The key that allowed them to be a billion dollar business was marketing, hype, strategy all things that could apply to any product technical or not. If you want to make something similiar you could probably get to 80% really quickly. Putting together a product with a reputation is a different event with timing luck and risk. Building that 80% is low risk but high personal reward. Has anyone built something to read and identify palms or lines in the hands?
  - TchoBeer 5y ago
    Sorry, out of the loop; what comment?
    - kyawzazaw 5y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
- morsanu 5y ago
  If you have the skills, you should definitely try it. We have a full team working on this for about 7 years. Constant improvements to our algorithms, new challenges, new technologies. A ton of other functionalities besides counting (e.g. forms, reports, integration). A lot of work on the backend, UX. Also, a lot of sales and marketing involved.
dzhiurgis 5y ago
Do you need help with Salesforce integration?
- geoduck14 5y ago
  Don't we all?
  - dzhiurgis 5y ago
    Hire me then!
antattack 5y ago
It seems to me that it would be useful for the app to count items on the left and right of a ruler (or some line) so correct number of items can be separated out from a pool.
amelius 5y ago
What approach does it use? Does it use image segmentation (e.g. U-net) followed by classic image analysis? Or does it get the counts directly from the network?
sumedh 5y ago
How did you come up with the pricing strategy. I imagine some big companies might pay more if they can save lot of money with this.
- morsanu 5y ago
  We iterated through different ideas and numbers. It's not an easy task, I can tell you that. We also try to have a good variety of choices: enterprise license, yearly, monthly or even packages of 24h. And we also have some free demo counting template, you don't need a license while using them. Including one to help people involved in the vaccination process: https://countthingsqanda.com/?p=1587 https://countthingsqanda.com/?p=1587
  - Someone1234 5y ago
    I really like the flexibility of the 24 hr ones. There are some industries/operations that need this, but only seasonally and that really fills a niche not filled by the monthly subs.
edge17 5y ago
Could you talk about some of the niche use cases of the app? I'm curious what the long tail of use cases looks like.

kasperni 5y ago

First, this looks amazing. I have a couple of very specific questions. Would it be able to count diamonds? I'm just wondering because the refraction of diamonds is very high. Would it be able to count items located inside clear zip lock bags? Also can it do any kind of categorization of the items? For example, 10 of type X, 20 of type Y?

joosters 5y ago
There's a 'raw diamonds' counting template listed on https://countthings.com/en/counting-templates https://countthings.com/en/counting-templates The categorization is an interesting question - those templates all seem to be of similar items.
morsanu 5y ago
Yes, we should be able to count them if they are visible in the picture. Please email our support with a couple of sample images. We are also doing classification for some of our templates/clients.

joosters 5y ago

How accurate is the counting? For examples like the case study, I presume your customers will want very close to 100% accuracy, but many other use cases will only need rough numbers. How do you calibrate / verify your app?

morsanu 5y ago
For most of our clients, we get to 100% accuracy. For some more difficult scenarios, a lower accuracy is ok for estimations (e.g. estimating the crop in agriculture). It's also super easy to correct mistakes or to add items that are not visible in the image.
- BorisTheBrave 5y ago
  You don't mean 100% accuracy, that means mistakes are impossible. Perhaps your error rate is very rare, but it's a bit concerning you don't attempt to quantify it.
  - leucineleprec0n 5y ago
    Suppose it depends on which part of the chain he attributes error, plausible lighting or poor positioning - anything that is an employee duty - does throw it off and then they scrub it. But yeah. Still.
  - jmmcd 5y ago
    I disagree. If we consider a single customer with a particular application, we probably imagine an iterative process like this: the customer supplies some sample images, the system gets a few wrong, they add special cases, fine-tune the hyperparameters, whatever, and after all this they literally get 100% on the customer's holdout data. If that happens for several customers then the GP statement is justified (no other number is possible for these customers). Possibly you're thinking of a single error rate across all customers? For other customers, as stated, it's not 100%. But taking an average across multiple customers is not meaningful when some are counting pearls and some are counting crops.
matsemann 5y ago
You have to take into account the error rate of human counting when making the comparison. I can also imagine the new process have other benefits. Like before, if a customer complained of getting fewer than ordered pearls, they would probably have to acknowledge that as a counting error on their side but not knowing. Now they have a picture/data to refer back to. At least that's how it is where I work; the automation leads to reduced errors, and when they happen the amount of data makes it easier to track where it went wrong.
dintech 5y ago
One thing to consider is that humans don't have 100% accuracy for large numbers of things.
klyrs 5y ago
The article shows a photo with the pearls highlighted with circles. I'm generally skeptical of AI, but this system produces a certificate that a human can verify much faster than doing the work themselves. IMO, that's the right way to do it. You can trust the system 99% of the time, and check a random 1% by eye every day. Or, you can keep a human fully in the loop and still save time (though, if the error rate is too low, humans will get bored)

zerovar 5y ago

Probably a very naïve question but, how did you know/find out that an app to count things could be a profitable business?

morsanu 5y ago
No, it's actually a pretty good question. We are a custom ML & computer vision software company and about 7 years ago we got several requests in a short time period for counting items in images. We thought it was a great idea for a product and kind of started our journey as an internal startup.
- dumb1224 5y ago
  Depends on the industry as well. Cell counting is a huge part of life science research and it's a well established business in lab-based pipelines (integral part of commercial solutions). However if you try to enter the realm of clinical field such as histology and pathology assistive technology it suddenly becomes tricky. Same with innovative diagnostic tools. You need clinical trials for those.

Noumenon72 5y ago

I just wanted to say that if you can count particles of things in microscope images, you can probably make great inroads at companies that do drug testing, like Covance or PPD in America. They're paying chemists to circle blobs on paper and count them. I bet they'd even appreciate someone to count their circles!

morsanu 5y ago
Thanks for the idea. Getting the app in front of companies that need it is one of our challenges.
gield 5y ago
The company I work at did a project like this where the goal was counting of different types of bacterial colony forming units (CFUs) that were cultured in Petri dishes [0]. We presented our results at ESANN [1]. [0] https://radix.ai/cases/gsk-vaccine-development https://radix.ai/cases/gsk-vaccine-development [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.05337 https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.05337

malpighien 5y ago

Is not it something anyone can do for free using image J with a bit of scripting.

danielheath 5y ago
Is this a bad time to remind HN of that famous comment on the founding of dropbox?
- ipaddr 5y ago
  Technically many could do what dropbox did to create a similiar product when they were part of yc class. Many HN have a personal dropbox setup they made themselves. The key that allowed them to be a billion dollar business was marketing, hype, strategy all things that could apply to any product technical or not. If you want to make something similiar you could probably get to 80% really quickly. Putting together a product with a reputation is a different event with timing luck and risk. Building that 80% is low risk but high personal reward. Has anyone built something to read and identify palms or lines in the hands?
- TchoBeer 5y ago
  Sorry, out of the loop; what comment?
  - kyawzazaw 5y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
morsanu 5y ago
If you have the skills, you should definitely try it. We have a full team working on this for about 7 years. Constant improvements to our algorithms, new challenges, new technologies. A ton of other functionalities besides counting (e.g. forms, reports, integration). A lot of work on the backend, UX. Also, a lot of sales and marketing involved.

dzhiurgis 5y ago

Do you need help with Salesforce integration?

geoduck14 5y ago
Don't we all?
- dzhiurgis 5y ago
  Hire me then!

antattack 5y ago

It seems to me that it would be useful for the app to count items on the left and right of a ruler (or some line) so correct number of items can be separated out from a pool.

amelius 5y ago

What approach does it use? Does it use image segmentation (e.g. U-net) followed by classic image analysis? Or does it get the counts directly from the network?

sumedh 5y ago

How did you come up with the pricing strategy. I imagine some big companies might pay more if they can save lot of money with this.

morsanu 5y ago
We iterated through different ideas and numbers. It's not an easy task, I can tell you that. We also try to have a good variety of choices: enterprise license, yearly, monthly or even packages of 24h. And we also have some free demo counting template, you don't need a license while using them. Including one to help people involved in the vaccination process: https://countthingsqanda.com/?p=1587 https://countthingsqanda.com/?p=1587
- Someone1234 5y ago
  I really like the flexibility of the 24 hr ones. There are some industries/operations that need this, but only seasonally and that really fills a niche not filled by the monthly subs.

edge17 5y ago

Could you talk about some of the niche use cases of the app? I'm curious what the long tail of use cases looks like.