Today I finally had the opportunity to play with what might be the first ever Android diopter measuring app.
It’s quite fantastic. You need to feed it a one time only measurement of the distance from the bridge of your nose to your chin. After that, you just put the phone in front of your face, the app activates the camera to watch your face. You move the phone away from you until you start to see blur on the sample text. Once you see blur, you tap the button, and the app outputs your diopter (centimeter distance calculated, naturally).
The interface is still rough, but seeing it actually working is quite amazing.
I spent the better part of this year to get this app actually turned into a reality. Many developers told me it would be impossible. Lots of time and research has gone into this, and now we are rather close to an app you will be able to use instead of the tape measure.
Once some bugs are sorted out and a usable interface is in place, I plan on releasing it on Google Play for you. It will be free and no ads, thanks to all of those who choose to support this site through the paid course.
Depending on how well received and bug free it turns out, I will also create an iPhone / iOS version of the app.
I hope this will be the first round and basis for eyesight education and vision improvement tools that you can put in your pocket. Eventually I hope to combine this data with a log that you can access through the site, and also deliver some of the course and other content through the app.
Stay tuned. There is no exact release timeline yet, though hopefully we will have it ready in the next month or thereabouts.
The low tech variant, the printable diopter tape measure is also almost ready.
I will post updates here and via the newsletter. If you haven’t yet, sign up for it for advanced notifications and beta testing spots for the app!
