[HN Gopher] Candide - Identify Plants with a Photo
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Candide - Identify Plants with a Photo
        
       Author : sails
       Score  : 179 points
       Date   : 2021-07-27 09:50 UTC (13 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (candidegardening.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (candidegardening.com)
        
       | kurishutofu wrote:
       | The augmented reality function that seems to allow you to label
       | your plants seems intriguing. I wanted to try this over
       | PicturesThis (I don't like how PictureThis makes it look you need
       | their subscription for the app to work) But it seems the app is
       | not available in my region maybe because of GDPR, I guess?
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | rollulus wrote:
       | How does this compare to PlantSnap and pl@ntNet?
        
         | Tomte wrote:
         | Or Seek (iNaturalist)
        
         | sails wrote:
         | I haven't used either, but in the UK this works incredibly
         | well.
        
         | Someone wrote:
         | Or PictureThis (https://www.picturethisai.com/)?
        
           | nmstoker wrote:
           | Or Google Lens? I've only tried Lens on various office plants
           | (so not in the wild) but it was very effective for those
        
             | rosetremiere wrote:
             | Or seek! https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/seek_app
        
               | eurasiantiger wrote:
               | This is one of the best apps to install on your kids'
               | phones. Makes them go outside and get interested in their
               | surroundings.
        
         | keithnz wrote:
         | my partner used one called PictureThis and it identified most
         | of all the plants around our property here in New Zealand ( mix
         | of natives and introduced), it got ones that were a complete
         | mystery to us.
        
           | pmoriarty wrote:
           | I used to use PictureThis until they started requiring a
           | login in order to use it. Then I switched to LeafSnap, which
           | works great.
        
             | cube2222 wrote:
             | At least for me on iOS it doesn't require a login.
             | 
             | I too confirm that PictureThis works great.
        
               | Liquid_Fire wrote:
               | For me (Android) PictureThis requires a login, and limits
               | you to 1 identification per day, unless you pay for a
               | monthly subscription. It didn't use to in the past.
               | 
               | However, the linked app (Candide) also seems to require a
               | login, so I'm sure it's just a matter of time before they
               | put limits on free accounts.
        
             | ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
             | I have it, and they don't require a login. I use it several
             | times a week.
             | 
             | My main complaint about it, is that it's a battery hog; but
             | it works well.
        
             | acheron wrote:
             | I started using PictureThis recently and do not need a
             | login or anything. Works pretty well at least in my yard
             | and nearby parks.
        
             | cormacrelf wrote:
             | This is one of those markets where even ignoring open
             | source/etc you never need to pay for it, because at the
             | moment there is a new plant recognition app once a
             | fortnight with a free trial. And none of them have any real
             | lock-in because they're basically stateless.
        
       | Jolter wrote:
       | So, what's the monetization strategy? What data am I giving up if
       | I use this app, and how will they use it?
        
       | ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
       | I have an app on my iPhone that works pretty well (PictureThis).
       | Probably does about the same thing as this.
       | 
       | I noticed that the following clause in their Ts & Cs:
       | 
       |  _> You grant us an irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide and
       | royalty-free right and license to use your Content for the
       | purposes of providing, promoting, developing and trying to
       | improve the Candide Platform and our other services, including
       | new services that we may provide in the future. We will not sell
       | your Content to any third party_
       | 
       | does not have punctuation after the last sentence.
       | 
       | I'm not a Grammar Nazi[0], but that tells me that the sentence
       | was changed at the last minute.
       | 
       | [0] http://queenofwands.net/d/20031003.html
        
         | hicksyfern wrote:
         | I don't work at Candide any more but I was CTO there when this
         | was written. I can assure you you're reading too much into it!
         | 
         | Candide is very well set up to protect users' private data, and
         | has a great set of engineers and engineering practices in place
         | ensuring this, as well as, you know, not ever selling data to a
         | third party!
        
           | ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
           | Thanks for the clarification. I know that lawyers spend a lot
           | of time revising these types of sentences; usually with an
           | eye towards exit plans.
           | 
           | I appreciate the authoritative response.
        
       | kazinator wrote:
       | Google's camera app does this in the Lens mode.
       | 
       | I snapped picture of the example picture; it came up with Swiss
       | Cheese Plant.
       | 
       | Don't know how good it is. I've used it maybe seven or eight
       | times in the past for identifying plants; it worked every time.
       | 
       | Most recently, over just this past weekend, it identified an Elm
       | tree from a shot a branch.
        
       | amarant wrote:
       | Google lens can already do this. It identifies other things too,
       | which is nice. And from my very limited testing lens is more
       | accurate.
       | 
       | I guess this is nice for the "cancel Google" crowd though...
        
       | SeanFerree wrote:
       | This is an excellent resource!
        
       | antirez wrote:
       | Try Plantnet, it's free and is a research project. Works really
       | well.
       | 
       | https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.plantnet&h...
        
       | a9h74j wrote:
       | Not precisely on topic, but two professors at U.C. Berkely are
       | involved in helping people identify edible plants in urban
       | settings, particularly Oakland. This excellent piece makes
       | mention of a phone app they are using in conjunction.
       | 
       | https://phys.org/news/2014-11-foragers-bounty-edibles-urban-...
        
       | jpxw wrote:
       | My immediate thought is that this could be quite dangerous if
       | used by inexperienced foragers. It's very easy as a human to
       | misidentify poison hemlock as cow's parsley, for example, which
       | is a lethal mistake.
       | 
       | It's a very cool project though, of course.
        
       | jsmorph wrote:
       | https://www.inaturalist.org/ also does this kind of thing.
       | iNaturalist works well for lots of different organisms.
        
       | ahhhndi wrote:
       | German research project doing same for free:
       | https://floraincognita.com/?noredirect=en_US
        
         | _Microft wrote:
         | _Flora Incognita_ is great. Very recommended!
        
       | karencarits wrote:
       | There is also a free service trained on Norwegian plants:
       | https://orakel.artsdatabanken.no/
       | 
       | The final step in the user guide is (roughly translated):
       | 
       | > Now it's your turn to think! A high match percentage is no
       | guarantee that the result is correct. Artsorakelet tries to match
       | your pictures to pictures it has seen previously, but many
       | species have no, few, or bad pictures! It has not been trained on
       | domestic animals, garden flowers or humans, or pictures with
       | restricted access, such as images of large predators
        
       | injidup wrote:
       | Awesome. It identified my fully grown pepper (capsicum ) plants
       | as spinach. What could go wrong?
        
         | chefandy wrote:
         | At least it didn't identify it as "not hot dog."
         | 
         | I wonder how much funding these guys have, and how much of it I
         | could get by intentionally non-fatally poisoning myself with a
         | misidentified plant? How much indemnity can the whole _" WHILE
         | WE ENDEAVOUR TO ENSURE THAT THE INFORMATION ON THE CANDIDE
         | PLATFORM ARE CORRECT, WE DO NOT WARRANT THE ACCURACY AND
         | COMPLETENESS [...]"_ thing actually provide?
        
       | monkeynotes wrote:
       | Google lens does a pretty good job of identifying plants, along
       | with everything else. I use it a lot in our garden and a majority
       | of the time it correctly identifies.
        
         | tgtweak wrote:
         | There is really very little need for 3rd party apps on this.
         | I've yet to stump lens on any Fauna or Flora in my neck of the
         | woods. I suspect it is location aware, which gives it a pretty
         | big edge in filtering out duplicates.
        
           | raffraffraff wrote:
           | Interesting, I can't use Lens. Installed it, but it just says
           | "Thank you for updating. Lens will be available soon"
        
           | trts wrote:
           | My success rate with Google Lens is about 80-90%, sometimes
           | doing additional research to confirm between similar results.
           | 
           | With a couple different dedicated apps I had zero success.
        
       | londons_explore wrote:
       | How does this perform Vs Google lens?
        
       | iliesaya wrote:
       | https://plantnet.org/en/
        
         | riffraff wrote:
         | I have been using plantnet for a few years and have been pretty
         | happy with it. The ability to contribute+validate your
         | identification is great.
         | 
         | It does fail sometimes but it's pretty good, and the UI has
         | improved in recent releases.
        
           | xattt wrote:
           | I have to agree on PlantNet. It is good enough to come up
           | with a general name of a plant (ragwort), that you can then
           | look up in a local plant guidebook to find out the specific
           | variety (common ragwort).
           | 
           | Hopefully, a privacy-friendly phone (ie Apple) manufacturer
           | acquires them and does deep OS integration with the app.
        
             | codingdave wrote:
             | I'm not understanding why you say that being purchased by a
             | phone manufacturer would be better - wouldn't the optimal
             | solution be to expose any features from the OS that the app
             | could need, while leaving the app developers their
             | independence?
        
               | xattt wrote:
               | I'm trying to understand the business model that PlantNet
               | has. Right now, it's obviously some sort of exploitative
               | data harvesting - hoarding geotagged plant photos to sell
               | to academic researchers, highlighting hotspots for nature
               | tourism, etc.
               | 
               | I was alluding to Apple in my comment, as they are the
               | ones that have a model for their mobile devices being
               | some sort of knowledge lens. They are very easily capable
               | to eat the cost of maintaining the database without
               | resorting to some sort of exploitative business model.
        
               | alainv wrote:
               | You didn't look very hard[1]. It's a research project
               | funded by grants and donations, and as far as I can tell
               | they give away their databases[2].
               | 
               | [1]: https://plantnet.org/ [2]: http://data.plantnet-
               | project.org/datamanager/_design/dataman...
        
               | xattt wrote:
               | I tried to look for an explanation of the scope of their
               | project from the FAQ. Since it wasn't openly included, I
               | assumed it was deliberately omitted.
        
             | notdang wrote:
             | And leaving out those that are using other platform without
             | the app.
             | 
             | Currently PlantNet works on Android, iOS and web.
        
       | davgard wrote:
       | I have tried Plantnet; it works as expected. But looking through
       | the website, I might give this one a try and compare it to
       | Plantnet to see who's better.
        
       | superkuh wrote:
       | I uploaded it a photo of my wild cucumber and it said it was
       | passion fruit. But that's a completely legit mistake since I
       | literally made the same one until it started flowering.
       | 
       | But then I uploaded a photo of a catnip plant and it thought it
       | was a milkweed plant. In fact, it's 0 of 4 for common plants in
       | my garden this summer. Seems like a great idea with a marginal
       | implementation.
        
       | olivierlacan wrote:
       | Understandably people are realizing that it's now much easier to
       | discover what plants (and animals, and fungus, etc.) exist around
       | you and whether they're special in some way.
       | 
       | But when picking apps to accomplish that task, I suggest
       | selecting for those that respect your privacy (because a lot of
       | these plant observations involve GPS location), are clear about
       | how the machine learning datasets are trained and what's being
       | done with the data you're supplying, and lastly how these apps
       | and companies are funded.
       | 
       | PictureThis is owned by https://www.glority.com
       | 
       | Candide appears to be a UK startup:
       | https://candidegardening.com/GB/about
       | 
       | iNaturalist and their Seek app
       | (https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/seek_app) is a joint venture
       | between the California Academy of Sciences and the National
       | Geographic Society: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/about
       | 
       | Moreover both iNaturalist
       | (https://github.com/inaturalist/inaturalist) and Seek
       | (https://github.com/inaturalist/SeekReactNative) are open source.
       | The former is a Rails app, and the latter a React Native app with
       | no account registration system making it safe and legal to use
       | for children since all observations are stored in-device by
       | default unless you chose to send them to your iNaturalist account
       | to share with the community.
       | 
       | On functionality alone it's extremely rare for Seek not to
       | recognize an organism (yeah, it's not just plants) and when it
       | is, I simply send the observation to iNaturalist whose network of
       | naturalists both amateur and professional usually manage to
       | definitively identify my observations within a few hours. Here's
       | a recent example:
       | https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/86844469
       | 
       | The iNaturalist community itself is fascinating and quite
       | transparent with detailed site stats
       | (https://www.inaturalist.org/stats) and a clear mission statement
       | ( https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/what+is+it): > iNaturalist is
       | an online social network of people sharing biodiversity
       | information to help each other learn about nature
       | 
       | At a time where biodiversity is more threatened than ever, I
       | welcome any tool to help folks identify and value the organisms
       | around us, but if you're going to pick one, my recommendation is
       | iNat & Seek.
       | 
       | PS: I'm not affiliated to iNaturalist in any way other than as a
       | happy user.
        
         | tkahnoski wrote:
         | Seek is AWESOME. We discovered it late in 2020 but it raised
         | the bar for all our outdoor excursions with the kids. Even a
         | routine walk around the neighborhood is an enriched experience
         | as the kids careful observe their surrounding looking for a new
         | bug or flower.
         | 
         | The only downside is when we get to a new place I have to
         | remind the kids we can't stop every minute to 'Seek' something
         | otherwise we'll never get back home!
        
       | fiddleleaf wrote:
       | So like Google Lens but not cross-platform
        
       | perryizgr8 wrote:
       | > This item is not available in your country.
       | 
       | I don't understand why so many apps do this?? It's a free app,
       | why not let me use it?
        
         | ramesh31 wrote:
         | Thank developer laziness and GDPR
        
       | virux wrote:
       | You're one step closer to living a Better Credit Life Free From
       | Debt Burden. HARRY RAYMOND CREDIT REPAIRS gives you more than
       | just credit repair! With FICO Certified Professionals, Board
       | Certified Credit Consultants, and Paralegals, you are in the most
       | knowledgeable hands possible. Not only does HARRY RAYMOND CREDIT
       | REPAIRS come with a 90-day Money Back Guarantee, but we are also
       | A+ rated with the Better Business Bureau. Call, email or send us
       | a Whatsapp message today to find out why! hraay25@gmail.com +1
       | (213) 295-1233 Your credit is key to your future and we are
       | dedicated to helping you achieve your optimal credit profile.
        
       | neves wrote:
       | How is this better than Inaturalist? https://www.inaturalist.org/
        
       | yepthatsreality wrote:
       | What ever happened to dichotomous keys?
        
         | pvaldes wrote:
         | Were replaced for something worse, more primitive and less
         | accurate. Sign of the times.
        
       | virux wrote:
       | have been a client of HARRY RAYMONDS CREDIT REPAIRS for about
       | 2weeks now. I have 6 negatives items, some collections
       | foreclosure on my report after I contacted them concerning my
       | problem they gave me a couple of days to wait and after then when
       | I checked my report I couldn't believe my eyes all negatives
       | entries collections including the foreclosure were completely
       | cleared and I also got an amazing scoreof 810 excellent.They are
       | very friendly and caring about helping me in fixing my bad credit
       | and I got approved for the mortgage I applied and got my First
       | Home. You can contact them on Email: hraay25@gmail.com +1
       | (213)295-1233 Call or (Whatsapp) to get your credit fixed. I HOPE
       | THIS HELPS OUT.
        
       | lmilcin wrote:
       | Nice concept.
       | 
       | Unfortunately, I have tried to identify some of my plants but it
       | could not identify correctly a single one. Just an endless
       | procession of at best similar plants, most of the time completely
       | dissimilar.
       | 
       | I think this is another naive model that just tries to push
       | entire problem to AI. That is unfortunately what I am seeing
       | nowadays, very unimaginative. Just try to have fun with
       | parameters of the network until you find some kind of
       | configuration that seems to be working.
       | 
       | What it would benefit from would be some kind of
       | analysis/classification of basic features of the plants like
       | what's the basic shape of the leaf, trunk, how things are
       | connected, etc.
       | 
       | The classification would benefit from AI (like identify where
       | leaves are, where trunk is, etc.) but then that intel would be
       | passed to a more classification-oriented algorithm.
       | 
       | (disclaimer, I am not an AI developer, it just seems to me like
       | pretty rational way to approach the problem)
        
         | Tenoke wrote:
         | >What it would benefit from would be some kind of
         | analysis/classification of basic features of the plants like
         | what's the basic shape of the leaf, trunk, how things are
         | connected, etc.
         | 
         | There's no reason to think that needs to be done separately,
         | and in fact that's the kind of things that you'd expect a good
         | model to find on its own.
         | 
         | In general, we've already learned that while handcrafted
         | features can help, they are often ultimately worse than learned
         | ones as techniques get better.
        
           | gbrown wrote:
           | > There's no reason to think that needs to be done
           | separately, and in fact that's the kind of things that you'd
           | expect a good model to find on its own.
           | 
           | Disagree - learning to classify morphological characteristics
           | _is_ learning the generalizable features. Especially given
           | that some plants are going to have relatively few photos,
           | knowing with high confidence some diagnostic factors and GPS
           | could absolutely outperform the brute force approach.
           | 
           | This isn't about hand tuned features, it's about predicting
           | the right thing.
           | 
           | Also, the approaches aren't mutually exclusive.
        
           | lmilcin wrote:
           | AIs are useful for "fuzzy" problems, but are not very good at
           | doing precise things with high reliability.
           | 
           | Every plant has baked in restrictions on how it grows. If you
           | can identify separate features of a leaf and how the leaf
           | grows out of the stem you can basically look it up in a table
           | and tell what kind of tree you are looking at, without need
           | for guessing.
           | 
           | On the other hand AI will develop its own classification
           | method but one that has unknown faults in it.
           | 
           | Maybe it has learned to look at the lighting direction
           | because half of the data set was non-suculents with light
           | from the left and half was succulents with light from the
           | right, because it came from a different facility?
           | 
           | Or maybe different cameras were used to photograph different
           | types of plants?
           | 
           | So now rather than looking at the leaves it uses light
           | direction or photo grain to tell if it is succulent or not?
           | 
           | Face the reality, you are wrong.
           | 
           | The above algorithm returns completely nonsensical results
           | for my searches, plants that have completely different
           | structure and coloration and nobody would ever mistake them.
           | 
           | It relies at you looking at the suggested solution, and then,
           | Hey!, here you have five more, maybe your plant is somewhere
           | on the list?
           | 
           | This is only marginally useful but could have been so much
           | better if it tried to identify structure of the plant.
        
             | IgorPartola wrote:
             | Would it be possible to train the model to identify the
             | features and then just have it run those through a trie of
             | plant classifications? Trying to bake classifications into
             | the model does seem silly but you still need an element of
             | computer vision if you want to do this.
        
               | lmilcin wrote:
               | That's exactly what I thought up without having any
               | experience in the area.
               | 
               | So, basically do what a person would do -- identify
               | simple features visually and then consult the book to go
               | through decision tree to figure out what you are looking
               | at based on these features.
               | 
               | As you go through decision tree, you keep excluding more
               | and more possibilities until you are left with only one
               | match.
               | 
               | You would never mistake oak with a cactus because there
               | are so many occasions on this decision tree to go one or
               | the other way that you would have to make multiple
               | mistakes.
               | 
               | But that's exactly what the algorithm seems to be doing
               | -- mistaking plants that are very far away from each
               | other when it comes to their build.
        
               | IgorPartola wrote:
               | That's the same problem you might have with a self
               | driving car driven by an ML algorithm: is that an open
               | lane or someone wearing a black outfit with white
               | stripes?
        
         | Fiahil wrote:
         | To be honest, nothing works better than Plantnet for
         | identifying plants. They do the pre-selection where you choose
         | wich organ you're looking at (trunk, leaf, flower, fruit, ...).
        
           | CTOSian wrote:
           | Plantnet is a gem, they don't even want you to
           | "register"/"connect with FB/Google" for "tracking" purposes
        
             | ornornor wrote:
             | I think it's a research project and not a commercial VC-
             | money-burning startup. I highly recommend PlantNet as well.
        
         | phito wrote:
         | Right. This kind of thing is only going to work on very common
         | plants that are easy to ID. I am very into carnivorous plants
         | and even us experts sometimes have trouble identifying plants,
         | often you need very specific morphological details to ID
         | species that a phone picture will never be able to catch.
         | 
         | IMO this will just lead people to wrongly ID their plants more
         | often than not, and that's a really bad thing.
        
           | jvvw wrote:
           | I've used PictureThis a great deal to identify both wild and
           | garden flowers. I've found it really good for the 95% most
           | common plants and also for getting you in the right ballpark
           | so you can then look things up more easily in a field guide.
           | I've just accepted that there are some species that it can't
           | distinguish between - often you need to know exactly the
           | right feature to look at of the plant to differentiate
           | species. It'd be useful though if it flagged this a bit
           | better. Umbellifers are a classic example. It gets them
           | correct more often than not, but I think it'd be good for it
           | to indicate that uncertainty better.
        
           | jazzyjackson wrote:
           | The iNaturalist app does a spectacular job at identifying
           | plants (and insects, fish, birds...), even disambiguating
           | based on your location
           | 
           | You label geotagged images with the AIs suggestion if you
           | agree with it and then other users can either confirm or
           | suggest a different / more specific species.
        
             | phito wrote:
             | You got me curious, so I tried that app, and I'm getting
             | "Unknown species" for every single one of my plants... I
             | guess no identification is better than bad identification.
        
               | 7952 wrote:
               | Are they garden plants?
        
               | phito wrote:
               | No, they're carnivorous plants grown in greenhouse.
        
               | ravila4 wrote:
               | You need to click on the "Unknown Species" box in order
               | to get a list of suggestions. Probably not the most
               | intuitive, but it avoids auto-assigning IDs without prior
               | review.
        
               | lmilcin wrote:
               | It is an important feature. For plants, users will
               | immediately see that the answer is wrong but for many
               | other things (identifying suspects automatically) it
               | might not be as obvious.
               | 
               | As a bonus if the algorithm can tell it can't identify
               | correctly you can use this feedback to teach the
               | algorithm.
        
               | bottled_poe wrote:
               | A great example of this is the Akinator app. The
               | developers built up a database of answers by getting the
               | users to fill in the missing data, which produced more
               | accurate results and subsequently attracted more users.
               | That feedback loop for apps like this seems like a very
               | effective model. What I find interesting about this is
               | that the value of the product, from a business
               | perspective, comes from the success of the software in
               | enabling that feedback loop, while from the user's
               | perspective, the value is in the data. But the data is
               | emergent from the feedback algorithm.
        
               | abeppu wrote:
               | Is it perhaps also a difference in intended use? If
               | iNaturalist is for wildlife and uses location heavily, eg
               | identifying tropical houseplants indoors in a different
               | region might not work.
        
               | jazzyjackson wrote:
               | The GPS helps with a "seen nearby" weight, but it
               | shouldn't exclude anything. Could be a factor of
               | photography, with some plants it's easier to get a nice
               | canonical leaf shape than others. Taking a wide angle of
               | a potted plant such that the whole plant is in frame
               | might not provide enough detail, so there's a learning
               | curve in knowing how to photography for the algorithms
               | benefit, kind of like learning how to phrase search
               | queries for better Google results
        
               | phito wrote:
               | Could be, I just set location data on it with the
               | original location of the plants, but it still cannot ID
               | them. Granted, they are not very common species.
        
               | jazzyjackson wrote:
               | Perhaps they are unknown species! Hah, well, sorry my
               | recommendation didn't come through, I can imagine it
               | performs better on common plants everyone takes pictures
               | of, which is what I'm identifying when I walk around
               | town.
               | 
               | Still, if you post the plants under a more general
               | species other users can identify it mentally, adding to
               | the data set.
        
         | _Microft wrote:
         | Flora Incognita, a free plant identification app for Android
         | and iOS, developed by a German university, does that.
         | 
         | You choose a category first, like "tree", "flower", "grass" or
         | "fern" and it will guide you through the process, trying to
         | identify the plant with as few photos as necessary. Common ones
         | it will identify from a single image, for others, it will e.g.
         | prompt to take a close-up photo of the bark, bloom or the
         | complete plant in its environment. From what I understand, they
         | are aiming for accuracy of the identification and will provide
         | a description of possibly matching plants if there is still
         | ambiguity. Very recommended!
         | 
         | Edit: here is a link if it sounds interesting:
         | https://floraincognita.com
        
           | leo_bloom wrote:
           | Funny enough, I only get a 403 Forbidden error when opening
           | that website. And I am located in Germany with a German IP.
           | Though my server at Hetzner (also in Germany) has no problem
           | retrieving contents from that domain.
        
             | ahhhndi wrote:
             | To much traffic from HN for that small shared webspace :)
        
           | kortex wrote:
           | This app is phenomenal! So far it's picked up everything I've
           | thrown at it. Can't say that of the other two plant ID apps
           | I've tried before. I think it uses geocoding to some extent -
           | it asked for my location (which is fine by me) but it
           | required a leaf, fruit, and bark pic to figure out Northern
           | Catalpa, which isn't common around here. Everything else has
           | been leaf and maybe a fruit or whole plant pic.
        
           | mobilemidget wrote:
           | One of these things I think of when I do garden things, "I
           | bet there is an app for this" but typically as soon as I have
           | left the garden I forget all about it.
           | 
           | I have installed the app now for the next time I am gardening
           | :)
           | 
           | Thanks
        
           | ewokone wrote:
           | Thanks for pointing out!
        
           | nend wrote:
           | I've been using an app called PlantNet that works similarly.
           | 
           | Upload a photo, tell the app which part of the plant is in
           | the photo (leaf, flower, fruit, bark), and it'll tell you
           | what the plant is.
           | 
           | Highly recommended as well, almost always identifies the
           | plant with just one photo. I'll have to check out flora
           | incognita sometime.
        
             | ogrisel wrote:
             | plantnet works very well. I have also used Google Lens (the
             | magic button on Google Photos on Android) but I have the
             | subjective feeling that plantnet works more reliably for
             | plant identification.
        
             | bwanab wrote:
             | I've been amazed at how well PlantNet works. It's
             | identified a number of invasive species in my yard that I'd
             | otherwise have remained ignorant of.
        
           | swader999 wrote:
           | This will bolster my fantasy of living off the land like the
           | savage I want to be.
        
       | endantwit wrote:
       | ObsIdentify identifies both plants and animals. Works way better
       | than I'd have ever imagined!
       | https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.observatio...
        
         | kyrra wrote:
         | Not available in the US?
        
       | jiehong wrote:
       | Or just have actual botanists identify the plants for you (while
       | helping gathering data for AI later):
       | 
       | https://www.flowerchecker.com/
       | 
       | You get a confidence factor, a link to its wiki page, and you can
       | even send a special message with the pictures to help clarify
       | things.
        
       | bizzleDawg wrote:
       | Related to this, I've been working on a side project
       | (https://www.hedira.io/, house plant care advisor) for nearly 2
       | years now. We haven't gotten time to add species recognition by
       | images, but I've done enough to know it's really hard!
       | Thankfully, being houseplant focused, people normally have an
       | easy time finding out what specific species they have in front of
       | them.
       | 
       | I made some classifiers using coreML to test the idea and as with
       | a lot of ML problems, 90% accuracy is trivial, but it gets
       | difficult really quickly after that. Especially without flowers
       | (since they tend to be more unique).
       | 
       | The simplest way I could find to add detection was to use
       | something like the plantnet API (https://my.plantnet.org/usage)
       | which powers the app of a similar name. There are a couple of
       | other plant recognition APIs worth looking at too.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2021-07-27 23:01 UTC)