Tl;dr: I launched an app. Get it here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.myopia.measurer

The original project

About 18 months ago (wow, time flies!) I built an Arduino-based device to measure your eyesight (read more about it here). However, it turns out taking it to the next stage - that is, PCB design and manufacturing - is prohibitively expensive (hundreds of £s). Using a breadboard-based device on a regular basis was not convenient, due to the physical size and fragility.

So, I decided to look into an Android app.

Market research

The first step was market research, to see what was already available. There is an Android app called endmyopia, but personally I didn’t find the measurements accurate (possibly due to my strangely shaped face), and I didn’t like the camera feature. I also found a couple of face-to-screen distance proof-of-concept projects on GitHub, which functionally were decent, but not designed to measure eyesight, and they were a few years old, so didn’t work on the latest Android operating systems. However, what if I could take aspects from both and create my own? It would also be a fun experiment in having my own app - something I’d never done before.

Developing the app

Although I have some experience with coding, I’m not a developer. I haven’t touched Java for years, and I have zero experience with Kotlin. Instead of trying to do it myself, I thought I’d give Upwork a go.

I found a wonderful developer who was able to, as a first step, update one of the GitHub projects to work on the latest versions of Android. Perfect! I went back to the developer to add some nice UI features, such as diopter calculations, adjustable settings, an about page, etc.

Launching the app

Once I had an MVP I was happy with, I went through the process of adding it to the Google Play Store. Not too difficult: pay the membership, do some paperwork, and upload the app. And sure enough, it was live!

Improving the app

Over the next few months I’ve iterated to add additional features or improvements. Some I was able to do myself, looking at the existing code and reverse-engineering it using my existing knowledge. For features I knew would take me too much time to figure out myself, I returned to the developer on Upwork. There are still more features I’d like to implement, but some of these will take a lot of time (and hence money) to integrate, so they’re currently on pause.

I’ve also added ads, partially to learn more about how ad-based apps work, and partially to try and recoup some of the development costs. In three months I’ve recovered 3%, so… maybe within a few years I’ll be in the black.

Feedback and comments

If you have any comments or feedback, I suggest posting on the thread on the Endmyopia forums. I do read them and implement features I can.

Also, if you want to leave a (positive) review on the Google Play Store, please do - ideally not one like this: Review