I'm dealing with a really tedious process at an event site where I have an 8' tall wall map and need to position a couple hundred items on it. Right now, I stick stickers with object numbers onto the map and manually record the coordinates into a database, which is a huge hassle. I've been thinking about finding a way to digitize this process. Similar to how the old Microsoft Kinect could record points in space, I'm looking for a solution that allows me to record the coordinates of the stickers on the physical map efficiently. Ideally, I envision using stickers with QR codes, where we stick them on the map that has a sort of latitude/longitude system, allowing the tech to record their locations in our database without needing to separate from the physical map itself.
4 Answers
Have you considered using barcodes or QR codes for your stickers? You could snap photos while they’re placed on the map and note their GPS coordinates with a camera. Another idea is to create an SVG version of your map and then plot the coordinates accordingly, though that might require some math to get it right.
If you're not super technical, you might want to look into using a vision language model like Qwen-VL to possibly analyze a picture of your map. If that doesn’t work, you could use YOLO or SAM to identify the stickers and read the QR codes or text.
Another option might be to use a large digital whiteboard or smart board! You could display the map and use touch or pen input to interact with it. It's more reliable in some ways, but make sure it has a good backup plan in case of power issues.
Thanks for the suggestion! The physical map is something we have to keep, though.
You could definitely use a good USB camera for this! With a suitable OpenCV application, you can read QR codes on the stickers as you place them on the map, capturing the coordinates without all the manual input.
Yeah, that's a great idea! I think the camera option would definitely help streamline things.