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A Japanese company cut 80% of the time needed to manually count pearls

countthings.com

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Re: A Japanese company cut 80% of the time needed to manually count pearls

#161

Post by morsanu »

bellyfullofbac wrote: post #142

Nobody cares that this is just an ad? It's got too many paragraphs of bullshit filler for something that's basically "they're taking pictures and counting the pearls using machine learning".

Of course we are trying to promote our business, writing some case studies is one way to do it.

But I shared this here not because I thought we will get clients from HN (probably we will be getting some competition instead) but because I thought it's an interesting application of technology that people would enjoy reading about.

Maybe we don't see things the same way but even learning about the manual process of counting pearls was interesting for me.

Re: A Japanese company cut 80% of the time needed to manually count pearls

#162

Post by toomuchtodo »

Aperocky wrote: post #153
rubenbe wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Value pricing at it's finest. If the customer saves $1000/month per device, they'll happily pay the $100/month. As it still saves them $900. They don't care how complex/simple the ML implementation is.

But is there any barrier to entry though? By the looks of it, none, the next app will charges $5 per month and it could even be generic ('round objects counter')

Until then, profit is profit.

Re: A Japanese company cut 80% of the time needed to manually count pearls

#163

Post by TheAdamAndChe »

Aperocky wrote: post #153
rubenbe wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Value pricing at it's finest. If the customer saves $1000/month per device, they'll happily pay the $100/month. As it still saves them $900. They don't care how complex/simple the ML implementation is.

But is there any barrier to entry though? By the looks of it, none, the next app will charges $5 per month and it could even be generic ('round objects counter')

It may not seem like it to those of us who know how to do it, but there actually is quite a barrier to entry. You or an organization needs to have the skills to utilize machine learning algorithms, test them thoroughly, package it in an easy-to-use application, then market it and compete against competitors. Just ask your every day Joe what you should do with a learning rate if your error rate suddenly spikes or how to monitor for overfitting. Then ask them how to form an LLC or how to create and audit a liability release waiver for clients.

Re: A Japanese company cut 80% of the time needed to manually count pearls

#164

Post by Someone1234 »

morsanu wrote: post #160
sumedh wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you come up with the pricing strategy. I imagine some big companies might pay more if they can save lot of money with this.

We iterated through different ideas and numbers. It's not an easy task, I can tell you that. We also try to have a good variety of choices: enterprise license, yearly, monthly or even packages of 24h. And we also have some free demo counting template, you don't need a license while using them. Including one to help people involved in the vaccination process: https://countthingsqanda.com/?p=1587

I really like the flexibility of the 24 hr ones.

There are some industries/operations that need this, but only seasonally and that really fills a niche not filled by the monthly subs.

Re: A Japanese company cut 80% of the time needed to manually count pearls

#165

Post by meowster »

lccarrasco wrote: post #156
mandeepj wrote: post #151

They could not count by weight (before ML)? For e.g - If 100 pearls weight 10 gm etc? They could also have used a machine for counting them

The picture in the bottom of the article shows that varying sizes of pearls need to be counted at the same time, making using weight very unreliable. Even if only similar size pearls are allowed, small variations multiplied by a large amount of pearls can cause issues, such as distinguishing 100 pearls of 99 grams each from 99 pearls of 100 grams each.

They could use a simple sorting machine that sorts pearls based on size (like how most coin sorting machines work - run all coins over a small hole, the smallest coins fall through, then run have a slightly larger hole after that, and so on).

Then they could have a simple optical/laser sensor below each hole to count how many smallest, smaller, small, medium, large, larger, and largest pearls fall through each hole.

The benefit would then be that if customers wanted pearls of a certain size, they are already sorted.

Maybe there is an enterprising user here that reads this, can easily create it, and reaches out to pearl companies.

Re: A Japanese company cut 80% of the time needed to manually count pearls

#166

Post by pokoleo »

Gaessaki wrote: post #154

I think what the CountThings app is doing is great. There are too many industries where tasks are being performed inefficiently due to a lack of applying readily available technology. They had the foresight to develop a product for a very common problem and make a business out of it. I’m a bit surprised that this is making the rounds of HN though. OpenCV and other computer vision libraries have trivialized such count…

This article is perfectly within HN's audience!

• Clever way to distribute "the future" to a niche/under-served audience

• MVP (likely) buildable in a week/weekend

• Marketing material demonstrating success

• "This could be my passive income side project" appeal to bored tech company engineers

It underlines the thesis in some patio11's content:

> The future is here, it's just not widely distributed yet.

Re: A Japanese company cut 80% of the time needed to manually count pearls

#167

Post by wyldfire »

geoduck14 wrote: post #140
La1n wrote: post #57

Is ML here needed? When I was working in a lab we used the opensource ImageJ for counting cells. It seems like it'd do a great job here too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ImageJ

Yes. Yes. 1000 times YES! Why are we having this discussion? Why are people in HN amazed at this? What is wrong with the world where something like THIS is impressive?!?

It's not that it's impressive as a novel approach. It's impressive because they found a market with a need and delivered a product to meet that need. It's simple enough that it seems like an obvious need and yet complex enough that there's not that much competition.

ImageJ is suited to the needs of scientists and engineers. Perhaps one could craft a workflow using ImageJ but it would be much less integrated than the mobile app from the article.

Re: A Japanese company cut 80% of the time needed to manually count pearls

#168

Post by bobthepanda »

Gaessaki wrote: post #154

I think what the CountThings app is doing is great. There are too many industries where tasks are being performed inefficiently due to a lack of applying readily available technology. They had the foresight to develop a product for a very common problem and make a business out of it. I’m a bit surprised that this is making the rounds of HN though. OpenCV and other computer vision libraries have trivialized such count…

For a non-tech company, implementing it may be easy but the hard part is getting someone around when it stops working. This saves 3 months for the pearl company, they're not paying someone full time for an implementation of computer vision counting.

SaaS allows this cost to be distributed across many clients, making it accessible for businesses that can't afford to keep around a full infrastructure and the engineers required to keep it running.

Re: A Japanese company cut 80% of the time needed to manually count pearls

#169

Post by varjag »

pokoleo wrote: post #166
Gaessaki wrote: post #154

I think what the CountThings app is doing is great. There are too many industries where tasks are being performed inefficiently due to a lack of applying readily available technology. They had the foresight to develop a product for a very common problem and make a business out of it. I’m a bit surprised that this is making the rounds of HN though. OpenCV and other computer vision libraries have trivialized such count…

This article is perfectly within HN's audience! • Clever way to distribute "the future" to a niche/under-served audience • MVP (likely) buildable in a week/weekend • Marketing material demonstrating success • "This could be my passive income side project" appeal to bored tech company engineers It underlines the thesis in some patio11's content: > The future is here, it's just not widely distributed yet.

The thesis is originally from William Gibson.

Re: A Japanese company cut 80% of the time needed to manually count pearls

#170

Post by andredz »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #133
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about others, but because a lot of IT news comes to me from American medias, I _always_ consider it hype. The reason is cultural: american can't seem to do without superlatives. They didn't eat good carrots yesterday, there were AMAZING carrots. They don't introduce me to their friends, but to their VERY BEST friends. They are always EXCITED to do X and SO something about Y. The result is that none of th…

I live in Southeast Asia and am in a Facebook group where foreigners often post asking for recommendations. Americans always phrase their questions as, "What's the BEST pizza?" or "What's the BEST sushi?" As if they would die (or could even tell the difference) if they had the fourth or tenth best option in the city instead. And if you recommend a place too expensive or too far away it becomes immediately clear they…

As seen in this comment in another thread currently in the front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27263606 (Although the person that used 'best' in that story is from the UK).
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