kmharish

Hey guys, I'm new here. I joined primarily because I had an idea for an Android App & I want to know whether it's feasible & what challenges might be involved. I want to build an App that can tell you the name of any building around you. You simply launch this App which in turn will launch the Camera App & you point your mobile towards the building to get its name on your screen.

This is how I think it could be implemented: Part 1 is getting the GPS co-ordinates of the building that you're looking at. For that, 1st we get the mobile phone's GPS co-ordinates using its in-built GPS receiver. Then we find out the distance & direction of the building from the mobile & get its GPS co-ordinates. Part 2 is finding out what exists at those co-ordinates. This is the hard part & I would like you guys to help. I'm thinking we could use Google Maps or pre-loaded maps or something like that.

This App is a bit similar to Google Goggles, but Goggles is dependant on a huge database of images. I don't want that. Instead it could depend on some user contributed database like Google Maps. Also, I found an App called Andrometer (highwaynorthinteractive.com) that can find your distance from any building by making you stand at 2 points A & B 20 meters apart, with A, B & the building forming a triangle. Another distance finding logic that I thought of is that you make the user walk towards the target keeping the camera steady & get the distance by measuring the magnification of the image that the camera sees.

I'd like to know if anyone of you has a better idea for finding distance & your suggestions for Part 2 of the logic. Also, can anyone explain to me how Andrometer works exactly.

JJackson

Can't addresses be incorrect though? If you searched my address on Google Maps, you would see a marker on a house that isn't mine. I'm not sure how that would affect your idea though.

Steven58

Welcome!

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kmharish

I'm not searching for any address in Google Maps. I'll get a Google Maps image of the GPS co-ordinates that I just calculated & then somehow extract the text from around there.

G.Armour

Welcome to the Android Forums!

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rahuldi

Hai this is Rahul,
Can you please guide me how can we calculate the distance and direction of the building from the mobile and get the GPS co-ordinates of that building. I have the GPS co-ordinates of the mobile?