Front camera is not supported - card.io

The function CardIOActivity.canReadCardWithCamera(this) and the class CardIOActivity itself does not provide a way to allow people working with front camera. Can this option be provided?

We (card.io) experimented quite a bit with using the front camera (including mirrored output and not) and found it to be an awkward and uncomfortable user experience, so we made a conscious decision not to enable it.

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Implementing google smart action with custom device trait

I have been trying for a while now to create a kind of "controller" for my windows pc which is integrated with google assistant.
I would like to have actions like "Turn off the internet", "Shutdown" or "Open program".
However in trying to implement this with Google smart action API I see that it "only" supports a set of traits. I know I can "reuse" different traits for different actions, like "OnOff" to control pc power, but how about starting programs on my pc?
I would like to use natural commands (Hey Google, open Word), instead of the conversational API which is (Hey Google, talk to my pc -> open Word), but I would understand if that is not possible, since the traits are how Google HomeGraph knows which devices supports the users query.
Am I going into a rabbithole of impossibilities and should I just bite the bullet and use the Conversational API?
Any open source projects which is doing this would also be appreciated, end goal is implementing something myself, but inspiration is always nice.
I previously built my own PC integration with the smart home platform and gave it a few commands.
Going through smart home means that you cannot add custom device traits. Whichever exist in the platform are it. However, there are quite a few traits available for use.
In your set of use cases, there is an AppSelector trait and a NetworkControl trait. You may be interested in using both of these.

Api sdk or database for simulating a turing test?

I'm trying to provide a chat like environment game for kids to detect if the person speaking to them is human or not (similar to what Eugene did).
I'm looking for an SDK or api that would provide me with replies for sentences (either with context of the entire conversation or without). An alternative would be a an entire database of sentences that I'll be able to search for myself and implement my own logic.
Another option is to integrate some kind of open source solution if possible.
Does anyone know of such a service \ solution can could point me to the correct direction?
If you want some database of discusions then try to found some Corpus of dialogs this is the first one which i found. It is the corpus of movie dialogs:
http://www.mpi-sws.org/~cristian/Cornell_Movie-Dialogs_Corpus.html
And if you want some chat-bot to use in your program than is probably easiest way to use some public available api of one. There is again something which could work for you:
http://blog.program-o.com/chatbot-api/
Good Luck

Returning to Stage3D (Away3d) after StageVideo

I'm having the well documented problem of StageVideo killing Stage3d, or at least overlaying a black layer above the Stage3D on mobile.
I've attempted some of the various solutions offered around the forums, including moving the viewport off screen, assigning the netstream to a normal flash video before closing. None of these seem to help.
Adobe's answer seems to be that is is working as it's designed and it's not a bug, specifically:
When using Stage3D, the user must call Context3D.present() to make the stage layer update. There is no independant update of the Stage, Context3D.present() drives the update of both the Stage and the Stage3D layers. This is necessary to achieve high performance. Workarounds include making all the Stage3D invisible and delaying the Context3D creation until you are going to start using it.”
From https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=3186454
Away3d seems to use Stage3D managers in the core, and there is a present() function, which contains the important Context3D.present().
I'm having trouble trying to initiate this call, but can't see a way to access it.
Does anyone know if this is likely to work, and what the call might be?
I got around it by using a native extension https://github.com/freshplanet/ANE-Video/

Mapping without Google Maps (on a stand-alone server)

I've been asked to create a stand-alone site/app that's not connected to the web (all on a local server).
One part of it is to have a map of a natural reserve with a bunch of links that will show footpaths, different animals habitat areas, visitor centres and such.
So there's a map (static picture) and when you click on it some overlay goes on top of it.
At least that's the way I see it now.
I've looked here: http://www.carto.net/williams/yosemite/ but it just looks mucho ugly.
Getting Maps Premium is not an option as it's not that cheap. And the reason they don't want to use Maps/Earth free API is because internet connection is still very slow there (sattelite internet only and when optic cable will be hooked up nobody knows).
Looking for some recommendations as to how to proceed there. Drawing paths/areas on the picture of the maps seems extremely insufficient and time consuming.
I'd need some way to use coordinates to automatically draw areas and lines over the map (and then somehow export that as a graphis file (or SVG) that'll be layered on top of original map simply using ajax.
Will ARCGIS pro edition be the way to go or should I start learning SVG. Do you know some good SVG books/tutorials (as related to mapping)? Maybe there's some other way around altogether...
They do have detailed maps of the area in ARCGIS (whatever format they are in I don't know yet).
Just looking for some ideas, any help will be appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Do you know GeoServer? More or less all-in-one, compatible with different types of datasets, widely customisable.
Starting from "raw" SVG and write the whole thing yourself will probably be prohibitively time consuming.
If you have very little data (say less than 50 geometries) that is fixed, you could also use OpenLayers without any backend server.
For the data you could use a OpenLayers.Layer.Image if your (overlay-) map consists of a small raster image. For vector data, you can use OpenLayers.Layer.Text or a OpenLayers.Layer.Vecor together with protocols OpenLayers.Layer.KML or .JSON.
You can click through the current release examples.
I admit that this is not an easy task for a beginner, but it's fun hacking the maps together.

How to switch users in a smooth way in a Point-Of-Sale system?

I am designing a Point-Of-Sale system for a small shop. The shop just have one Point-Of-Sale but often they are one to three users (sellers) in the shop. Each user have their own user account in the system so they login and logout very often. How should I design the login/logout system in a good way?
For the moment the users don't use passwords, because it takes so long time to type the password each time they login.
The Platform is Windows Vista but I would like to support Windows 7 too. We use Active Directory on the Network. The system is developed in Java/Swing for the moment, but I'm thinking about to change to C#.NET/WPF.
I am thinking about an SmartCard solution, but I don't know if that fits my situation. It would be more secure (which I like) but I don't know if it will be easy to implement and smooth to use, i.e. can I have the POS-system running in the background or started very quickly when the users switch? Are SmartCard solutions very expensive? (My customers are small shops) Is it preferred to use .NET or Java in a SmartCard solution?
What other solutions do I have other than passwords/no passwords/smartcards?
How should I design the login/logout system in a good way?
Is there any good solution using SmartCards for this purpose?
I would like suggested solutions both for C#.NET/WPF and Java/Swing platforms.
I would like suggested solutions both for Active Directory solutions and solutions that only use one user profile in Windows.
How is this problem solved in similar products? I have only seen password-solutions, but they are clumsy.
An interesting solution is to use "Fast User Switching", i.e. the capability to have multiple user sessions open on the same PC. The POS software could be launched through the Startup folder of each seller account and would stay active in each seller session.
I thought that being in a domain (i.e. using Active Directory) disables Fast User Switching, but according to The old new thing, this was true on XP only. I just checked with my Win7 machine at work: it is in a domain but still has the "switch user" menu item.
The main advantage is that if your software is already multi-user aware, you don't need to change it.
I should have made the Fast User Switching check before writing what is below, because this seems to be the simplest solution. Here are other ideas, anyway.
Another solution is what you mention of having a single Windows user but several "virtual users" that your application manages. A smart card is a good way to implement a pseudo-login. In C++, the API allows detecting the removal or insertion of a card, so the application could detect this and read the card after insertion to know who's currently in front of the computer. .NET can easily call this API through P/Invoke; I don't know much of Java, except that JNI could be a solution to call the native API if there is no managed library that publishes this capability.
What should be done is researching the different types of card and how to talk to them, as your app should use a card that does not require a PIN to be accessed (or you are back to the slow login system, except if tying a 4-digit number is not considered too slow).
I've seen restaurants where waiters insert a key into the cash register in order to be identified. I googled "cash registers" but could only find a complete solution package, rather than the components like a key reader.
An almost idiotic question is: how much security do you need ? Does it make sense to have big buttons on the first screen of the app, where people click in order to tell the system who they are ? When they are done, they click on a "Finish" button and the app goes back to the "identify" screen. I've put this at the end because it is so simplistic that it has a low probability of being useful.
I'm not familiar with a broad range of smart card provider solutions, but I know Gemalto has a .Net friendly setup. Most others are geared to Java, but support is widening.
With regards to switching user sessions and your application, it depends on how "heavy" your application is. If your app requires quite a bit of start-up time / resources then you might consider creating the basic application as a service on the machine which can run in the background continuously and then you can load a light-weight UI to interact with the service with each user session (maybe launch via Startup menu).
There is a C# project on CodeProject which provides a framework for interacting with smart card services in windows - might be interesting reading.
I had a chance to work with the Open Source Computer Vision library (OpenCV)
in one of my past projects and its "Face-Recognition" is what you're after. It is written using native code, but can be easily used with Java, .NET, Android, iOS. All you need is a webcam and a button "Switch User" with the onClickListener that will take a picture and compare it with the images of your employees. Advantage? Once the picture's taken, it gets processed in less than 10ms. And as Timores mentioned earlier, once the face is recognised, you simply switch the session. Simple yet effective solution. Good luck!
maybe you want to think about using barcode scanner... probably you already have this device on POS ... my software for bars and restaurants use barcode scanner to recognize users. You have 2 options for using: first, user must log in with own barcode card, then he can use the application ... the second is better, everyone can use application, but to print the receipt user must use barcode card. After then he is responsible for that amount on this receipt.

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