Chess Position OCR for iPhone?

I hear that there are at least two apps for Android that can take pictures of chess positions and, via optical character recognition (OCR), convert them to FENs.  Has anyone come across any such app for the iPhone?

I believe the best app for this is ChessOCR. It is available for Android, but the developer says that he is not working on an iOS port. I first discovered this when I was using an iPhone myself. I thought the app was so valuable that I bought a no-contract Android phone just for this purpose. (No need to activate it.) Now that I also use an Android phone, I still use the no-contract phone for this and most other chess apps since I use them so much and that way I'm not always running down the battery on my regular phone.

Edit  - I should also add that originally I found that not all Android tablets had cameras suitable for the app. You should try the app on your Android tablet, if you have one, and may be able to use that instead of a phone, though I very much find the phone handier for this myself.

Thanks for posting, guys! I've had an idea (but lack the expertise) for putting a phone where it can view a chess board and have a DGT-lite type arrangement where the score is kept automatically. This isn't quite that, but shows it could be done.

In the meantime, I will check out ChessOCR: on social/novice nights at my local chess club games are rarely recorded, but there are sometimes positions people want to examine after the game. Of course a photograph and human reproduction of the position works for in-person use, but is a pain to set up for computer analysis.

Again, thanks. Neat tools, phones.

(BTW from the little i know, a "port" from Android to iOS or vice-versa is pretty much an independent re-write, as the languages used are not similar. Perhaps developers working on both try hard to keep the logic separate from appearance et al, but from the number of "apps" available for either platform and not the other it's not a simple problem.)

Hmm. Says only diagrams, not chess boards and pieces. Still, if one's possible, perhaps the other is too. (Like I need a new idea for a time consuming project. Not!!)

If u want to have the PGN, chesstech is the best way as it takes a pic of your scoresheet and outputs the pgn file: http://chesstechsolutions.com/

Thanks NM Snail28. Another resource to add to the toolbox.

would any one be interested f i wrote an Iphone app version of this?

let me know, i might have a few weeks to do it.

cheers

Not having tried those applications but having gone through some brilliancy entries for a recent OTB competition, I believe I saw three correct scoresheets only two of which (from the same player) were readily legible.

One was totally impossible with missing moves and white-written-as-black and vice-versa.

Another even the player could not reconstruct with me.

I know I am commenting without having tested the two applications previously noted, but no application could produce a correct PGN from most of the scoresheets I saw.

@t1ooooo you might read the PGN specification clearly: it allows omission of a distinguishing file or rank if an otherwise ambiguous move is not ambiguous because one of the pieces is pinned. Thus your application will need a board representation and move legality checker.

I'm not saying "don't do it" but my advice to tournament organisers is to only accept brilliancy entries as PGN files!

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skelos, im only talking about the ability to take a picture of a position and have it understood and then you can open it in you chess app.  Me an my coach go through positions form books, if we could just take a picture and they are already set up in a second it would be so much easier.  cheers

From a position, yes, I think that's valuable. You'll only need a FEN then though not a PGN.

My memory was leading me astray. Although "OCR" was mentioned, it was in the context of positions and not scoresheets.

I'd have been better to stay quiet ...

no drams, ill give it a go, cheers

the score sheet one is a good idea too,...  but man my writing is terrible, and when i enter it at home after the game, it takes me like for ever to work out some moves, and im not 100% confident i got them right, i guess if there was a tool to do it easy for me, i would take more care writing them down in the first place, might be phase 2 ;-)

OCR of handwriting is really hard. Knowing that it's a chess scoresheet and perhaps tracking the board might help.

Maybe someone will come out with a competitor to DGT's boards, and/or their patents will run out.

There’s a few decent ocr packages.  Also yes it could make it easier since it’s limited to just a few characters but could also be harder as partials on long words can be worked out easier. But I’d also like an otb one too. 

If you are looking for an iPhone/iPad or Android app for chess position scanning (from books or computer screens) and/or tournament scoresheet scanning then you can try CheSScan.
https://chesscan.com/

Disclaimer: I am the developer of the aforementioned app.