Phone App to help spot fakes
Ok, so here goes. I was talking with a member from this site the other day about a phone app. My original idea was to gather photos of the various boards and put them onto one site. This way when someone new to the hobby goes to buy a game they could check it out. The gentleman said that this was kind of a frustrating problem. He had serious concerns that by putting the boards on an app, those people not of good charactor would have easy access to copy an almost perfect replica. So I sat back and thought a little more. Instead of putting the boards for all to see, what if we cataloged them and set up a kind of recognition system. Simply put, you take a photo of the board. You open it in the app and the app would match various points such as the game code, board type, etc. It would also look for suspicious things like wires or windows on epsom chips. This would cover some of the retro games. Like to be able to use this in Ebay later, but that may be more time consuming. Mostly this would be in person. I wouldn't want to catalog 5 dollar games like bases loaded for nes for example. And I am pretty sure there is enough info out there about little samson that one could find out rather quickly. Games like cowboy kid, krion conquest, earthbound, amoung others that fall around the 80-300 dollar pricelines. I mean if could be done do a free version and offer pro version with tips. I'm even game for money going back into site if we could make something work. Please pick apart my idea. Not being a smartass, but rather have a solid idea then 30 people saying that its good and never goes nowhere. The member on here was very polite by the way. I don't know his name on this site and will respect his privacy and not release his real name, but thank you to this individual for turning me on to this site. Thanks all.
Comments
The idea of your app being able to recognize a picture is interesting but the programming that would need to be done + recognition software would be very expensive. Would need deep pocket backers to get something like this going and it only has appeal to collectors.
With a good successful app you need something that has widespread appeal + makes something you were already doing easier/consolidating tasks to save time. If I'm on a hunt for Earthbound I can quickly bring up SNESCentral to double check the PCB.
Also it's worth mentioning most collectors who know how to spot a fake PCB would rather trust their eyes then an app. Big dollars are involved; think of the liability if the app told someone a fake F2 or Little Samson was legit.