Pleco Chinese Dictionary OCR Demo

Demonstration of the new OCR feature for our Pleco Chinese Dictionary software ( http://www.pleco.com/pleco2ip.html ), which allows you to instantly look up words simply by pointing your iPhone's camera at them. You can try this out in the latest version of Pleco (2.2); search for "Pleco" in iTunes to download our free basic app, open it, tap on the menu button at the bottom right corner of the screen, tap "Add-ons," tap on "Optical Character Recognizer," then tap on the button to download and try the demo.

This works best on the iPhone 4, but should work quite well on the 3GS too (as long as it's been upgraded to iOS 4); unfortunately, it won't work on the iPod Touch 4th-gen or the iPhone 3G, as the cameras on those devices lack autofocus and so can't see characters clearly enough to recognize them.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• smart phones
• smartphones
• iphone
• chinese
• dictionary
• ocr
• pleco
• cellphones
• gadgets
• software
• cell phones
• mandarin
• character

[mmunuay]

Does this feature require internet access? Could you use it on an iPod touch when not in a wifi zone, or when in another country where you do not want to pay roaming charges? 

[plecosoft]

@mmunuay It works without internet access, but unfortunately it doesn't work very well on the iPod Touch due to the iPod camera's lack of an autofocus lens - without that, it can't see close-up text clearly enough to recognize it. There are stick-on macro lenses you can buy for the iPod that can help with this, but really the best bet is to get a used iPhone 3GS (oldest model that has autofocus).

[maryviscos]

Sorry if anyone knows could please answer my question.Is this application avaible also for ipad?

[plecosoft]

@maryviscos Yes, but the iPad 1 has no camera and the iPad 2's camera is terrible so live OCR doesn't really work well on it - OCR of still images works beautifully, though.

[Maxcloudy]

this app can definitely help improve my Chinese. ipad 3 is coming out soon, and I plan to use that instead...hopefully they have a good camera to make this fully functional

[loadingscreens]

Fifteen dollars?

[plecosoft]

@mikexlarry Yes, the 3GS seems to work fine - in fact in certain circumstances it can even be a bit smoother than the 4.

[mikexlarry]

@plecosoft what bout 3gs? SMOOTH AND GOOD?

[plecosoft]

@mikexlarry Sadly no, the iPhone 3G doesn't have enough RAM to do real-time OCR without crashing, and even if we were able to fix that, the camera is so poor (low-resolution and no autofocus) that it wouldn't be able to see text clearly enough to recognize it.