In this article:
- What is Instant Reading Capture?
- Capturing Readings
- Supported Meter Types
- It's Not Recognizing My Meter!
- Best Practices
- User Preferences & Disabling OCR
Encircle is excited to introduce Instant Reading Capture—a new feature that eliminates the tedious manual entry of moisture readings during water damage jobs.
What is Instant Reading Capture?
Powered by Encircle AI and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology, it allows you to enter any Hydro reading simply by snapping a photo. Temperature, relative humidity, moisture content, and surface temperature will auto-fill within seconds.
Capturing Readings
The process is extremely straightforward.
- On the reading screen, tap Take Meter Photo.
- Snap a photo of the meter, using the focus frame to center the meter's screen in the photo.
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Encircle analyzes the photo, extracts the reading data, and auto-fills the reading for you.
Instant Reading Capture works across all reading types in Hydro: material readings, psychrometrics, and dehumidifier readings (when taken with the meter from the unit's exhaust).
Supported Meter Types
We have trained our model to recognize the most popular industry-standard meters with digital screens (including brands like FLIR, Tramex, Protimeter, Extech and Delmhorst). Models included, but not limited to: MEX5, Navigator Pro, MR60, MR176, MR277, BDX-30, QuickNav, Hygromaster L, Hydromaster 2 and MMS2. Many other digital screens will work as well. Our goal is to support every meter on the market, and we are constantly adding new models to our database.
Traditional Optical Character Recognition (OCR) systems can't easily read analog meters because OCR is specifically designed to recognize high-contrast, standardized text, not continuously moving needles or pointers.
It's Not Recognizing My Meter!
If the app fails to extract a reading, don't worry! Please take a clear photo of the meter screen and send it to us at ocrreadings@encircleapp.com. We use these photos to "teach" our AI what your specific meter looks like, so we can support it in a future update.
Best Practices
OCR works best with a clear, steady view of digital screens. Do your best to avoid these issues:
- Glare: Direct sunlight or a heavy flash reflecting off the meter's glass.
- Angles: Try to hold the phone directly parallel to the meter screen.
- Low Light: If it's too dark, the "segments" of the digital numbers might not be visible to the camera.
- Incorrect Meter Setting: Make sure the meter setting is set to the appropriate reading type. For instance, if you want to take air readings, make sure the meter is set to the thermo-hygrometer setting.
The reading camera provides a focus frame to help you get the best capture.
User Preferences & Disabling OCR
Instant Reading Capture is enabled on all readings by default. You can bypass it on an individual reading as needed—helpful if you've got an analog meter or if the OCR is struggling to read your meter.
If you don't wish to use Instant Reading Capture at all, you can disable the feature in your user preferences.
- From the job inbox, swipe right or tap the 3 bars at the top left to open the settings menu.
- Tap on your user profile at the bottom of the page.
- Select Preferences.
- Tap Enable OCR to to toggle the feature on/off.
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