Hobbs and tacho photos

What it is

On the Log Flight screen, both the Start and End meter fields have a camera button next to them. Tap it, take a photo of the Hobbs or tacho meter, and Syndik8 runs on-device OCR on the image to read the number and fill the field for you. You can always override the auto-filled value; the field is a plain text input with the OCR-read number already populated.

The End photo is persisted with the log as evidence. The Start photo is a workflow aid: it is held in memory during the log entry to help you double-check your reading, but it is not saved against the log.

Who can use it

The pilot logging the flight uses the camera button.
The pilot (as uploader) can always see the End photo.
Admins can always see the End photo.
Other members can see the End photo only if the syndicate’s photo-sharing setting is on. See Usage photo privacy.

Where to find it

Log Flight screen: camera buttons next to both Start and End meter fields.
Booking detail: usage-log entries show the End-photo thumbnail when the current member is allowed to see it.
Asset Usage history: same gating as the booking detail.

Fields / options

Field	Type	Required	Notes
Start meter photo	JPEG / PNG / WebP	No	Workflow aid, held in memory during log entry, not persisted. Camera button runs OCR and fills the Start field.
End meter photo	JPEG / PNG / WebP	No	Persisted with the log. Camera button runs OCR and fills the End field.

How OCR works

OCR runs entirely on the device. The image never leaves your phone for recognition.

iOS: Apple’s built-in on-device text recognition, available since iOS 13. No third-party SDK is shipped.
Android: Google’s on-device text recognition (ML Kit).
Web: the camera button is rendered, but OCR is a no-op. The image is captured and shown in the form, but no number is extracted. Type the meter value manually if you are logging from desktop.

Once the on-device recognition returns the text it found, Syndik8 has to pick the Hobbs reading out of the noise. Hobbs meters always have either 5 or 6 drums, with the last 1–2 drums representing the decimal portion (tenths or hundredths), but the colour-inversion boundary that signals the decimal on the physical instrument is invisible to text recognition. Which numbers it finds is therefore only half the job; deciding which one is the meter is the other half.

When the previous reading is known — the usual case. The camera button hands the extractor whatever is in the Start meter field, which the pre-fill has normally already filled in with the aircraft’s current reading. With that in hand it stops guessing: it considers every candidate number on the face and takes the one closest at or above the previous reading, because a meter only ever counts up. That is what lets a busy multi-gauge panel resolve to the right number rather than to whichever plausible figure happened to be recognised first.

When it is not known, because the Start field is empty, the extractor falls back to a four-phase reconstruction:

Slash normalisation. On-device recognition sometimes interprets the colour-inversion boundary as a / character, for example reading 2203.5 as 2203/5. The extractor merges any digit/digit pair whose combined length is exactly 5 or 6 back into a single digit run before further matching.
Explicit decimal. If the recognised text already contains a dotted reading like 2203.5 or 22030.45, the extractor picks it up directly. Only 4–5 integer digits qualify, so short fractions on other instrument faces (999.9) are ignored.
5- or 6-digit standalone group. If no explicit decimal is found, the extractor looks for an isolated run of exactly 5 or 6 digits. The last digit (5-drum) or last two digits (6-drum) are interpreted as the decimal portion: 22035 → 2203.5, 220345 → 2203.45. Shorter groups (RPM scale markings) and longer groups (serial numbers, barcodes) are rejected.
7-digit fallback. On-device recognition occasionally prepends a stray digit by misreading a nearby instrument edge as a 1. As a last resort the extractor drops the leading digit of any 7-digit run and re-applies the 6-drum rule (1222030 → 222030 → 2220.30).

If neither route produces a reading, the OCR pass returns nothing and the meter field is left for you to type manually.

Behaviour rules

OCR is best-effort, not required. If the image is unclear, the drum boundary lies across a digit, or no confident number is found, the field is left as-is and you type the number manually.
You can always override the auto-filled number. The field remains editable after OCR fills it. Type over the value if the reading is wrong.
You can save the log without using the camera at all. Typing the meter value directly is the manual happy path. Photos are never required by the system; individual syndicates may ask for them as a matter of policy but the app does not enforce that.
Private storage. End-meter photos live in a private bucket. The app generates a signed URL (15-minute validity) when a viewer is allowed to see the image. Direct links cannot be shared; the URL expires.
Accepted formats and size. JPEG, PNG, and WebP are accepted, and that list is enforced by the storage bucket itself, not only by the app. The meter photo is captured at up to 1280×1280 at 85% JPEG quality and used as-is for both the on-device OCR read and the stored evidence copy (there is no separate downscale step). The 10 MB ceiling is checked by the app before it uploads; the bucket sets no size limit of its own, so the only ceiling behind it is the project-wide one.