When it comes to managing your forest, the age of the trees plays a significant role. Determining if the trees are too old or too young to be felled, assessing the growth of your forest, and deciding if it’s time for thinning require accurate age calculation. Traditionally, there are two methods to count the annual rings: manually by creating a drill core with an increment borer or by examining the cross-section of the wood or stump after cutting down the tree. Alternatively, some PC software automatically counts the age based on a cross-section.
The ideal scenario would be having a tool that effortlessly counts the annual rings by simply pressing it against the tree trunk. Unfortunately, such a tool doesn’t exist yet, and for now, we need to find alternative solutions.
For a while now, we have been contemplating the idea of developing an app specifically for photographing drill cores and automating the annual ring counting process.
Why Build an App for Annual Ring Counting?
Here are several reasons why we believe building such an app would be beneficial:
- Numerous individuals have expressed the need for assistance in counting annual rings.
- Counting annual rings is already a common practice, with Haglöfs Company selling 5,000 increment borers per year.
- Calculating the age of drill cores can be challenging, often requiring a magnifying glass.
- Mobile phone camera technology has significantly improved in recent years.
- It presents an exciting challenge to build such an app.
Considerations Against Building the App
Naturally, a few factors raise concerns about building the app:
- Establishing a viable business model for an app like this may prove difficult, as it remains uncertain how much forest owners and companies would be willing to pay for it.
- The target audience for this app is relatively small, limiting the potential user base.
- As with any development project, the process is bound to be more complex than anticipated.
Despite these considerations, we have decided to take a leap of faith due to the following reasons:
- We have a resource-efficient and bootstrapped approach.
- Our team possesses experience in developing mobile applications.
- Our existing user base for our other apps provides access to potential users interested in counting annual rings.
To mitigate the risk of creating an app that offers limited value to users, we plan to develop it in two stages.
The first step involves building an app that allows users to photograph annual rings and manually count them with digital assistance. By tagging each image with a name and GPS position, users can collect data in the forest and subsequently count the annual rings. This phase will result in an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) that offers value to users.
If the initial app proves successful from a technical and user perspective, we will proceed to step 2.
The second step aims to implement AI technology to automatically count the annual rings. By collecting images of drill cores taken with the app, we can train AI algorithms. Presently, PC software exists that can calculate annual rings on polished cross-sections of trees. However, drill cores are more challenging to work with due to their dirtier and uneven nature, posing a technical hurdle that we are determined to overcome.
Stay tuned for our next article, scheduled to be published next week, which will explore the efficacy of today’s iPhone cameras for photographing drill cores.
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