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Comment by unquietwiki | Hacker News Reader

I've had a recurring idea in my head of a sensor you could mount in your car, and then be able to read QR codes from the side of the road, and get an index of all the businesses you'd be driving by for later lookup. Not sure how feasible or useful it'd actually be...

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That seems easier to do by using OpenStreetMaps and a GPS trace. You would need the businesses to cooperate by putting a QR code out, so they might as well cooperate and keep a maps listing up to date.

I could imagine maybe OCRing the results from a line-scan camera. That would read all the business signs and street names as you drive by them.

”Attractions along the route” must have been a standard feature on satnavs since the very first standalone TomTom sucked onto your windscreen. Newer cars having Google Maps built in make this even richer.

Why would I want to have this? No idea, but if I did I probably would use a modern dashcam (these can easily do 4K HDR with 60 fps nowadays) and later analyze the recording with OpenVC.

Some viofo dashcams even allow the connection of two secondary cams (those only FullHD) so you could scan to the left and right simultaneously to the front.

Reminds me of one of the ideas I heard about for how to do road navigation before GPS - you paint a bunch of barcodes on the road that your car reads as you drive over them, and then your computer figures out where you are (you would probably use dead reckoning with your car's speed and time, too).

Would you genuinely want this? I personally can't see why. Perhaps at conventions it could be useful as it's hard to visit every table.

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