scottb1978

I wasn't suggesting that it would be done by software. There are highly skilled people from other countries with skills such as video editing. I could provide a service where you upload your raw videos and these highly skilled people could construct the video professionally. You get the end result to share with your clients. Would anyone be interested in trialling a service like this?

Let's say you could wave a magic wand and have professionally edited inspection videos made from your the videos you are taking now with your cheap cameras. What would that be worth to you and is that something that others would be interested in?

You mean as sort of a video camera? Marc You can take photos & record video without needing to carry things around. You can build programs on them in a similar way to a smart phone. Just an idea, maybe not a good one

Even though it has been discontinued something like Google Glass or smart glasses could be an improvement.

The market size is fine. If I had 1000 customers paying $30 a month it would be more than enough. My job is to understand new domains and then build solutions for them. So like the guys suggest I go into a completely new business' and spend time with the domain experts to find out what I need to know. For the last 10-15 years I've been building software and then trying to find a market for it. I've recently learnt about a this process where first I talk to people and understand their problems and validate solutions and reduce risk by getting people to invest in the idea before building it. That reduces the risk and makes sure that I spend my time building solutions that people really want. So even though it seems unlikely that there is anything worth me spending my time building its a good result because I have validated that without building something first.

For sure, if you don't want / feel you need to change then I'm not trying to "sell" you guys anything. I'd be interested to hear what the younger guys coming into to the industry have to say about the current software on offer.

When I bought HI Pro in 2007 these same questions were being asked and answered. You could search Dom's website which has a forum with archives and a search function. Same approach, a dozen or so templates to choose from, Texas templates, earthquake templates, 4-point templates, and then you customize it yourself. HI Pro can be customized on the fly as you write the report and that report can become a template. Simple. I'm not seeing anything new here, in other words. What amazing breakthrough do you have for us? Agreed. I too use HIP and although I'm definitely no expert in use or configuration, the software seems to already do pretty much everything listed. I use an iPad mini in the field and pretty much write the report while I'm onsite and use a separate camera for everything. Sync the iPad through wireless network to my home computer, plug in the SD card and batch load all of the photos. I look at each photo exactly once and chose to use it or not and where it goes in the report and generate the report. The photo editing software is much quicker than my old method of searching for the photo and pasting into the report back when I used Word. I do use the optional hosting "in the cloud" which also sends out links to the client and agent automatically as soon as I upload the finished report. The term "reinventing the wheel" keeps going through my mind. Thanks for the tip with the report info. Based on past feedback it seems like the ipad & onsite data capture option doesn't work for everyone. From this survey there are still quite a few people that aren't using HI Pro and plenty still using plain old word. Home Inspector Pro 11 Homegauge 5 3D 7 Inspect It 2 Palm-Tech 2 Horizon 8 ReportHost 0 My own designed proprietary reporting program on Word 16 Total 51 To be fair you guys probably wouldn't be the target market anyway. HI Pro and onsite data capture with an ipad works for you so you are happy but what about everyone else. I'm curious why these people are still using word if there are perfectly good wheels out there. The whole point of this process it to identify if there is a pain point that needs to be solved and if people are prepared to pay for it. After I have done a few iterations on this mockup the next stage is to create an offer(like a kickstarter) where people can invest and become founding members for special benefits.

Can someone give me some guidance as to what the situation is with the reports. - What templates does everyone start with - What changes do you normally make to them - Are there other ways of doing them that aren't common but make more sense to the customer - What jobs suit which templates styles I've been thinking about having super flexible report templating and it adds to the complexity of the application quite a bit. It could come later but to start with I was thinking instead to have an extensive list of standard reports that you can either export straight to pdf or to another format (word?) where you can make further changes.

I've put together a clickable mockup that I'd love some feedback on.... You can see it here. Please give the images a chance to load. There is plenty I haven't mocked up but this would be the core of the application. If it doesn't make sense just ask which bits don't make sense and I will explain.

There could be some boilerplate that could come standard but the boilerplate comments would be created and updated by you. These would be reusable from one inspection to the next.

I wasn't suggesting that it would be a web app to be used in the field. This was the idea that I was looking for feedback on. Could it work for you? How reliable is your internet connectivity from your home or office?

You are right that it isn't for everyone but some of the benefits of a web application over a desktop application are: - You don't need to install or upgrade anything - It runs on windows or mac or anything with a browser - You pay for what you use, when you use it - All your reports, templates, data etc is backed up and secure - You get improvements & upgrades immediately as they are released - Your data can be accessed from anywhere and any device - The system can integrate with other web systems If I was to go and build a desktop app then straight away I would have to choose either windows or mac. Then you have to worry about different versions of the operating system. gah. lots of nightmares. You don't link to the full resolution images from the report. When all the images are dropped into the report they aren't very big so they can be uploaded to the server at that same size. What type of internet connection do most people have?

It certainly looks pretty cool. - Do you just upload every single image you take or do you pick and choose from your application and then upload the rest (is that the "Load Pics" button?) - What resolution do you take your photos with - Do you do any scaling or resizing before uploading or do they go up full res? - Do you annotate your images and can you do that in your app? - What is the "DAR" button It sounds like the best option is for HI's to just have a camera and then have a very slick process back at the computer. What do other people think? You would pretty much just do the inspections with your camera(no iphone or tablet apps) and then use a web based system that is simple, fast to use and could produce a variety of reports?

Here's a couple screen shots. It's kind of sloppy because I'm always fiddling around with comment buttons. Every category page is essentially the same. I can see everything, or just that category. You are a legend, thank you very much. Originally I was going to put together a mockup where you would do most of the data capture like this on a tablet app. Listening to the feedback however about having to carry something like a tablet around and how hard it would be to do data entry or etc I'm thinking that this won't suit many people. So rather than that what about a hybrid solution that is a combination of mobile phone app & web. The mobile phone app could have the list of inspections assigned to you and could be a simple data capture app where you select a space and take photos for that space. For notes it could have a speech to text or audio recording. All of this would be synced up into a web app. Then back at the office you could login to the web app and you would have an interface similar to what Kurt has kindly provided. It would have all the photos linked to the spaces you selected and any details that you captured. You would be able to drag and drop images, select boiler plate comments etc. and complete the report. This hybrid approach would mean you carry around with you only what you already have and allows you to focus on capturing the images and key notes on site. The simple interface on the web with everything already synced up ready to go should make completing the report pretty quick and easy. Thoughts? The latest iphones have an 8 megapixel camera.

Probably not, as I built it in FM Pro and I'd have to give you a sample, which I won't do. It's basic DB storage fields and query sets for the Comment and Graphic Libraries; find it, click it, it goes in the report. All the data collection is in portals to keep the size the file extremely small. It looks real simple because it is, but making it that way requires a lot of relational stuff going on under the hood. That's the trick. I don't need much.... all I've seen are the ones that have all the bloat so I would love a look at something that is scaled right back and works for you. What about a few screenshots or a screencast