Aug 02, 2018
Catchoom Team
CraftAR, craftar web, features, how to start, how to use, navigation, use craftar, user manual
Catchoom’s Craftar Image Recognition service allows you to integrate Image Recognition into your branded mobile and web apps.
The comprehensive solution enables the entire pipeline, from creating content to testing to developing and publishing your apps together with our Image Recognition service.
This article helps you get started in the service and learn how to use some of its key features.
If you don’t have an account yet, sign up (free trial available) to gain access to tools and features that facilitate the whole process. If you already have an account, log in to Craftar so that you can follow the instructions.
[All video tutorials used in the article represent the view on a desktop device, although you may also access your account on a mobile device.]
For a more detailed introduction to all the features in Craftar, check out the sections below.
This video gives a quick overview of the structure of the web interface:
0’23”: Access the Terms of Service.
0’26”: Check our Service Status for any given day, including uptime, response times and historical data.
0’41”: How to log out of Craftar when needed.
We will now help you learn how to fulfill key tasks as a user, pointing to these key sections and the features they include.
The Home section is your default view when logging in to Craftar. It provides you with quick access to other useful sections: managing your account, browsing your collections, and getting some basic help if needed.
Our service includes an agile cloud-based content management system that allows you to create content for your Image Recognition experiences. You can use this content in your mobile and web apps.
Here is an overview of the “content hierarchy” followed by our Craftar Image Recognition solution:
We will now help you learn how to create Image Recognition content for your apps.
Collections are groups of items to be recognized in your apps. (For example, a collection can include items representing the different consumer packaged goods in your store, a range of wines, or different pictures in a catalog, etc.)
Image Recognition is always performed within a specific collection. The number of collections you can have depends on your plan.
Each collection has a unique identifier, called token. Tokens are used in the Image Recognition API, in the Craftar demo app, and in the Image Recognition SDKs to specify which collection of images should be searched through.
You can create two types of collections: Cloud and On-Device. Read our article “Tutorial: Create a cloud or on-device collection to learn more about the differences.
You can create, manage and browse your collections in the Collections section in Craftar.
Learn how to create a new collection:
Learn how to delete an entire collection if you need to:
Read more:
You can browse, edit and create items inside your specific collections.
An item represents a real-world entity that you want to recognize. (Examples of items are: one specific consumer packaged goods product in your store, an advertisement or poster you want to make interactive, a logo, etc.)
Take a look at the Image Recognition API to learn how the information is received upon recognition.
To create a new item, navigate to one of your collections in the Collections section and click on “Add new item”
An “Image Recognition only” type of item contains:
Learn how to create an Image Recognition item, and see what the item’s overview page contains:
1’40”: How to create an item for Image Recognition
2’10”: The item’s overview page, including the image quality rating
2’35”: How to delete a reference image that belongs to the item
2’40”: How to delete the item itself
Read more, including how to optimize your images for your items:
Our Testing Tools allow you to test your items and collections, and demo your experiences created in our platform – even before you start developing your own apps.
The Image Recognition Tester tool (inside the Testing Tools section in Craftar) lets you perform image recognition queries against a specific collection of items. This way, it helps you optimize your set of reference images and rule out problematic items.
Upload a query image from your hard drive and you’ll see the items in your collection that match your query, including a score representing their similarity.
You can also see the query and response from a developer viewpoint, as if you were using the Image Recognition API from the command line.
Learn how to use the Image Recognition Tester tool:
You can use the Craftar demo app (available on iOS and Android) to:
Read more:
As part of our Image Recognition service, we provide you with SDKs, plugins, libraries and APIs that help you easily integrate the service into your mobile and web applications.
The Developer Portal section in Craftar gives you access to these tools.
We offer two APIs to connect to the Craftar Image Recognition service in the cloud.
The Management API allows you to upload content in a batch or connect your backend service directly and inject new content or update existing content when you need to.
The API Key provides authentication for the Management API. You can find your unique API Key inside the Developer Portal’s Manage API Access section in Craftar:
The Image Recognition API provides access to our recognition capabilities so that you can build your own client software.
We use tokens both in the Image Recognition API and Craftar Demo App to identify collections of images to search through.
You can access and generate new tokens inside the Developer Portal’s Manage API Access section:
All our mobile SDKs implement the Image Recognition API.
We provide PHP and Python libraries for both APIs. Thanks to our customers, we also have implementations of both APIs for .NET, and the Management API for Ruby.
You can access these libraries from the SDKs, Plugins and Libraries section anytime.
To conveniently download all our SDKs, plugins and libraries, go to the SDKs, Plugins and Libraries tab inside the ‘Developer Portal’ section in Craftar.
You can visit the Documentation page of a specific tool, such as an SDK, as you are downloading it.
However, you may also access all our Documentation and Glossary inside the Documentation tab in the Developer Portal section.
The specific Documentation pages typically provide you with pointers to the Tutorials you should follow to integrate the specific tool; the documentation of the Classes; how to run the Examples; the Requirements of your system to use the tool, and Release Notes of our continuous updates.
Our Support Center offers comprehensive guidance, tutorials, and best practices that help you develop your apps with our service, APIs and toolkits.
We offer you with quick access to our Support Center at any moment. One of the easiest ways to access the Support Center is to use the Get Support menu, but you may also visit it from the Developer Portal section by clicking on the ‘Support Center’ tab.
See how to access the Support Center from the Developer Portal section:
The Analytics tool allows you to track and optimize the performance of your items in specific collections over chosen periods of time and export the data.
You can use the dashboard to track your visual scans compared to the number of successful recognitions to
To access the tool, navigate to the Analytics section.
Watch our video to learn how to use the Analytics tool:
0’05”: Overview of the Analytics section.
0’17”: Select a collection to look at.
0’23”: Select a specific time frame.
0’31”: What the graphs show.
0’43”: Check which item had the highest number of successful recognitions.
Use the ‘Get Support’ menu to get answers to your questions, find useful guides and tutorials, and seek for help.
Clicking on ‘Support Center’ inside the ‘Get Support’ menu will open our comprehensive Support Center.
In our Support Center, you can find tutorials, articles, and public questions, arranged under thematic sections. Use the search bar to look for a specific question or topic.
If you have a question that you haven’t found an answer for (not even in our Support Center), you can always post a public question for our tech community and team.
For this purpose, you can use the Ask the community form, which you can also access from the ‘Get Support’ menu. (Your email address will not be made public.)
This feature is only enabled for users with an active paid subscription plan in Craftar.
If you are experiencing difficulties and you cannot find a public answer or solution to your issue, you may use ‘Contact Support’ in the ‘Get Support’ menu to contact our team.
This will open a private message box where you can detail your issue or question.
Use the My Account menu – located in the top right corner of the desktop view of the web interface – to manage all your account-related information and needs in one place.
You can navigate to the Account Overview section from the My Account menu to check your existing plan and quotas used, or modify the settings of your account.
You can set up and modify a preferred payment method and check your invoices in the Billing Information section, accessible from the My Account menu.
You can Contact Sales from the My Account menu or from Account Overview to set up a suitable plan.
You can also completely Cancel your subscription if necessary.
