trekhleb / Links Detector
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📖 👆🏻 Links Detector
Links Detector makes printed links clickable via your smartphone camera. No need to type a link in, just scan and click on it.
🚀 Launch Links Detector (preferably from your smartphone)
🤷🏻 The Problem
So you read a book or a magazine and see the link like https://some-url.com/which/may/be/long?and_with_params=true, but you can't click on it since it is printed. To visit this link you need to start typing it character by character in the browser's address bar, which may be pretty annoying and error-prone.
💡 The Solution
Similarly to QR-code detection, we may try to "teach" the smartphone to detect and recognize printed links for us and to make them clickable. This way you'll do just one click instead of multiple keystrokes. Your operational complexity goes from O(N) to O(1).
This is exactly what Links Detector tries to achieve. It makes you do just one click on the link instead of typing the whole link manually character by character.
⚠️ Limitations
Currently, the application is in experimental Alpha stage and has many issues and limitations. So don't raise your expectations level too high until these issues are resolved 🤷🏻.
🏋🏻 Model Training
The detection model was trained using TensorFlow 2 Object Detection API.
You may found the details of the training in 📖 👆🏻 Making the Printed Links Clickable Using TensorFlow 2 Object Detection API long read article.
⚙️ Technologies
Links Detector is a pure frontend React application written on TypeScript. Links detection is happening right in your browser without the need of sending images to the server.
Links Detector is PWA (Progressive Web App) friendly application made on top of a Workbox library. While you navigate through the app it tries to cache all resources to make them available offline and to make consequent visits much faster for you. You may also install Links Detector as a standalone app on your smartphone.
Links detection and recognition happens by means of TensorFlow and Tesseract.js libraries which in turn rely on WebGL and WebAssembly browser support.