If you’re familiar with any Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider, you probably know that the location of their servers matter when you’re trying to access their service from different locations. An app connected to a server in Europe will have a different response time if the user is running it from Singapore, South Africa, the US or the UK.
Over the last year, we’ve been taking a closer look at the time it takes for an app to perform Image Recognition in different global locations: from the scan and sending the image through to the receipt of the matching data from our servers. Also, we’ve received valuable feedback from many of you regarding response times from your specific location.
At CraftAR, when we say fast Image Recognition, we mean it. We want your app to rock and want your users to wait as little as possible. We couldn’t let users in certain regions hang around for the amazing experiences that you create every day. So we decided to re-do our architecture to support multiple regions.
Let’s look at the numbers – recognition speed around the globe
Up until now, if you were in Europe you were experiencing round-trip times of around 0,6 seconds; in the US, around one second; and in APAC one second or more.
Since early December, we’ve made two server platforms available, and all the requests from your apps will be processed by the server closest to each individual smartphone running your app. Our server infrastructure is now available both in the US and in Europe. This reduces most round-trip times to 0,6 seconds almost anywhere in the world.
Check out the following chart to see the difference this makes for an app in the US.
We’ve been running the new architecture since December last year to test the correct performance of all components. We’re now pleased to make it available to all of you. And guess what? You only need to change the URL, and your app will magically pick up the closest server to your users.
How can I speed up Image Recognition inside my app?
When logging into the web interface use http://my.craftar.net
If you’re using our APIs from your backend:
- For the Image Recognition API: change r.catchoom.com for search.craftar.net
- For the Management API: change crs.catchoom.com for my.craftar.net
If you’re using our SDKs and libraries for the APIs, we suggest to upgrade to the latest version. We’ve launched brand new SDKs for both Augmented Reality and Image Recognition that implement this change together with a number of bug fixes and updates. Stay tuned for more information about the new release. Also, do not miss the updates on the Python and PHP libraries if you’re using them for your back-end.