Range Finder

[Retro]

The music apps and text apps are cool but what about a real kick ass app like a range finder?
You whip out your Droid, look through the camera and point to an object down the way and bada bing. It tells you how far away in meters or feet that object is.
Probably not possible but it would be super useful and triple cool.

First post by the way. Enjoy the board. Great stuff!

[CJ Chitwood]

You're right, it's not possible. At least, not with any level of accuracy. Maybe if they add a laser emitter to future models, though, this might happen.

[XDViPeR]

I've always wanted something where I can place something on the screen of the phone, it would tell me the weight of that object.

But this is a awesome idea but won't be implemented in phones for quite a while.

[konzern]

The music apps and text apps are cool but what about a real kick ass app like a range finder?
You whip out your Droid, look through the camera and point to an object down the way and bada bing. It tells you how far away in meters or feet that object is.
Probably not possible but it would be super useful and triple cool.

First post by the way. Enjoy the board. Great stuff!

hmmmm i was thinkin more of along the line of.....i point the phone at my stove and it tells me its a range!!! WOOT WOOT!

I've always wanted something where I can place something on the screen of the phone, it would tell me the weight of that object.

But this is a awesome idea but won't be implemented in phones for quite a while.

hmmmmm that would be usefull for drug dealers! no need to carry around the digital scale anymore lol

[deserttopping]

would you settle for a fiance app?

[konzern]

hell yes!!! one that i can point the camera on a girl, then the phone will scan her, and it will tell me if thats my future fiance!

[Mike Hopkins]

The rangefinder app is actually possible but extremely complicated. We started working on it but finally ended up bailing on it since it required more resources than we had available. The idea was to build one to replace your bows site. We are mounting smart phones to our weapons (especially compound bows) on our site and selling brackets - but that is unrelated
But you could:
1) Trig out the distance (smart measure) - only works on flat ground
2) Utilize bracketing technology ( think bow site)
3) average all of this with GPS (if available) and interpolate ground angles with #1 as well as position
If you could utilize all of these components it is possible but it would be a complicated application.
We have a list of outdoor apps here and would love to ad a rangefinder!


forhuntersbyhunters.com

[PaulTech]

Maybe with the upcoming Android Accessory enhancements it will be possible to a laser range finder, I'm looking forward to the new OS.

[lburhop]

This is just a quick thought and I am not sure how much merit but I think it would be possible to tell distances of some things using a set object. You could have an object like a tennis ball take a picture of it at a certain known distance then walk away from the ball take a picture of it again and compare the amount of pixels from before to after the further away you are the smaller the pixels of the ball would be. My android development skills are not to the point of making this app but let me know what you think of the idea or if it would even work.

[sohguanh]

This is just a quick thought and I am not sure how much merit but I think it would be possible to tell distances of some things using a set object. You could have an object like a tennis ball take a picture of it at a certain known distance then walk away from the ball take a picture of it again and compare the amount of pixels from before to after the further away you are the smaller the pixels of the ball would be. My android development skills are not to the point of making this app but let me know what you think of the idea or if it would even work.

That would be an extremely inefficient to measure distance and you got to go to and fro and then use camera etc etc. A logical version who just simply use his feet as a guide to see how many feet it takes to reach the set object, finish. It maybe an approximation but your proposed way is also an approximation either. I think sometimes not using high-tech stuff like Android phone to do some stuff is easier and faster too