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Magic Sudoku – Solve Sudoku with the power of AR

134 points| mikerg87 | 8 years ago |magicsudoku.com | reply

57 comments

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[+] yeldarb|8 years ago|reply
Hi, thanks for submitting. I'm the developer of the app! Happy to answer any questions

(I was going to write up a medium post about the technical side of building the app but haven't gotten a chance yet)

[+] olympus|8 years ago|reply
Hi yeldarb! This is a really neat app. I don't want to diminish your creation, so please don't think I'm trying to put you down with this question:

How much of this was just glue-code to integrate a few modules, vs. how much did you have to do from scratch?

I'm asking to try to get an idea to see if ARkit is within the reach of an average joe- sudoku solver code could be a copy/paste, digit recognition could be a copy/paste, and ARKit should provide you with some environment/location info.

[+] pveierland|8 years ago|reply
Have you tried to render individual digits in the existing empty squares instead of rendering a whole new grid? Coupled with a font detection algorithm this could end up looking more magical.
[+] M4v3R|8 years ago|reply
Hey, congrats on shipping! Unfortunately your app doesn't work for me :(. I've tried it on few sudoku designs on my laptop screen (don't have anything on hand right now) and there were two problems - the camera would not focus on the screen which resulted in blurry image, and second - it didn't recognize the puzzle correctly and returned incorrect results. I did put my screen flat on the table to simulate a paper laying on it, because I noticed the app doesn't work when the screen was upright - it rendered the results horizontally anyway.
[+] generic_T|8 years ago|reply
Your app is awesome! What type of neural network did you use? Please write a post, I’m teaching myself machine learning and iOS development, and would love to learn from a successful developer!
[+] vegardx|8 years ago|reply
Just tried it out, and it looks very good. It was a perfect way to demonstrate ARKit to colleagues. But for some reason it flips the board upside down.
[+] sdrothrock|8 years ago|reply
Were there any particular advantages in using a neural network to solve the sudoku as opposed to an existing algorithm?
[+] krilnon|8 years ago|reply
Are you the same yeldarb as the one from kirupaForum?
[+] iamflimflam1|8 years ago|reply
Did something similar some time back before ARKit and vision frameworks were around.

Are you using the rectangle detection from Vision? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt96OomJY9A

[+] yeldarb|8 years ago|reply
Nice!

Yeah, I am using Vision's rectangle detection.. but it's really touchy. I've got a lot of heuristics in there to throw out bad results and smooth things out.

It doesn't do well if there's something near the puzzle though (like a horizontal rule or text like you might see in a newspaper layout).

Any suggestions on a better way to segment the rectangles? Or any preprocessing tips (I couldn't really find anything that made it detect things more reliably)

[+] sowbug|8 years ago|reply
Other good ideas:

- point at a board game and either do all the boring scorekeeping for me, or else advise me on best strategy

- take a photo of a bunch of lottery tickets and tell me whether I've won

[+] yeldarb|8 years ago|reply
Love these ideas! I have a long list of ARKit apps I want to build.. if only there were more months in a year.

I think my favorite is a Mario Kart style "ghost mode" for running. Where you could tell it what pace you wanted to go and it'd show ghost running in front or behind you at that pace!

[+] rawnlq|8 years ago|reply
I remember using Google Goggles for this back in 2011 or so.

The cool new thing is projecting the solution onto the paper and having it track correctly!

[+] cableshaft|8 years ago|reply
Wow, I was at a hack night and saw a demo by someone who had made exactly this type of app on his computer using its webcam. He built a neural network and trained it, and it could even handle angles that weren't straight on. I don't think he's the same guy, but yeah, it's a clever idea.
[+] opendomain|8 years ago|reply
Do you have a link or other info on the hack night?
[+] splike|8 years ago|reply
How would HN attack the problem of solving a crossword using this type of tech + character recognition?
[+] yeldarb|8 years ago|reply
A crossword solver was what I originally set out to build. iOS11's Vision APIs for rectangle detection weren't good enough to even have a shot at it though.

With better rectangle detection I think it'd be pretty doable!

[+] jdoliner|8 years ago|reply
Oh god mods, please add the word "magic" to the title, it's painful to read.
[+] gattilorenz|8 years ago|reply
Or remove "like", which is probably what was intended and slightly less sensationalist
[+] DanBC|8 years ago|reply
Email them. They don't see it otherwise.