FacePass: a tiny app to safeguard the device

chunyenliu · Last edited by chunyenliu on Sat May 10, 2008 3:47 am; edited 3 times in total

This software is designed to guard your mobile device from unauthorized use. Once it
is enabled, after the device is switched on, you can only unlock your device either by taking it
back to a place within a predefined radius relative to a locked location or letting the camera try to
match your face parameters against a saved default within the specified error tolerance. When both
authentication steps fail, the device will transmit the picture and GPS location to the specified
email address.

P.S. not fully functional at the moment yet

plusminus · Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2008 11:16 pm Post subject:

Really good if it works fine Smile

But how do you disable all keys Question

Regards,
plusminus

chunyenliu · Posted: Wed Apr 16, 2008 1:18 am Post subject:

At the moment, there is no good way to either lock the device or disable certain keys. I was hoping Android can provide some sort of API functionalities that can support security features. For example, things like scrambling the key temporarily, disabling phone dials, powering off the device, providing a way not to interrupt the current software on the current screen.

Anyway, if you know of any good ways, I would like to know.

Thanks.

qvark · Once Poster Joined: 16 Apr 2008 Posts: 1

Hi!, very cool application!

It is a pity that I haven't heard of it until now, because I have developed a "generic" biometric authentication system (featuring only Iris Recognition in the first release) and maybe we could have worked together!

My application cannot be considered finished (it is more like a Proof Of Concept), but I think the use of biometric technologies in mobile devices looks very promising!

BTW how well performs your application? I have had serious performance problems with the image processing algorithms, and I have simplified them so much that now the recognition is not very accurate Sad

(with the initial level of accuracy, the algorithms took more than 7 minutes in the emulator!)

I will post the details of my application when I have some free time.

Best regards,

Jose Luis.

chunyenliu · Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2008 3:47 am Post subject:

Glad to know someone out there also thinks biometrics will become an important part for mobile devices. 7 minutes seems a little too long for just recognizing the iris. I would recommend you break the main recognition algorithm into several small parts and send back a message to the handler so that you can figure out where the bottleneck is.

Best of luck.

C.Y.L.

chunyenliu · Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 6:26 pm Post subject: ADC 1 result

FacePass

Effective use: In the top 25% of all submitted applications
Polish: In the top 25% of all submitted applications
Indispensability: In the top 25% of all submitted applications
Originality: In the top 25% of all submitted applications

Overall: In the top 25% of all submitted applications

===============================================
Still think it is very odd that some other apps can make top 50. Over 10
of them are just basic XML parsers. Smile

plusminus · Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 8:15 pm Post subject: Re: ADC 1 result

chunyenliu

When I saw 1788 entries from 70 countries in ADC 1, I pretty much did not hold any high hopes, especially after I saw Enkin, DUO, Wifi Army, etc. However, after I browsed the announced winning entries, I realized this challenge was terribly run since a developer can tell if a software application is original or if it requires lots of programming effort. In winning entries, too bad we saw simple weather XML parsers like the one in your tutorial and several others are really way off the mark compared with some of losing entries. I particularly felt sorry for them since some of them even quit their job and did not feel respected after failing to make the winning list of an unfair contest.

I know you have a decent AndNav entry and contributed tremendously to this community. Without your website, I couldn't have solved many of my Android problems. You deserve my respect. I have been on the engineering staff for the world's largest GPS company (not TomTom Smile

) and did see the potential of your app. Tell you what - I was in the 2 software contests in the past and this ADC contest is the first time I did not succeed, but that is OK. I have done many things without the pressure of having to win anyway.

Good luck and thanks for your site.

plusminus