Summary

One not always have a measure ribbon in the pocket to asses which ball wins the point , in a 'petanque' or simply called 'ball game'.
Using a feet is not precise and your opponent may argue you are trying to move a ball ;-) So why not you taking a photo a do it with a few clicks?
Moreover ,only one measure suffices whereas 2 are required in reality.

Features

Manual ball/jack distance measurment.

Installation
 
Installs as a standard Android Market application. It will use the active locale ( French or English available ).  

Usage

Startup


 
Once downloaded from the market , click on the gray ball icon..

Measurment
 
You are now going to learn how to measure a distance. Click on the camera icon ( top right corner ) and aim at the jack. Stand on top of the jack so that the photo does not have perspective errors. Freeze , and take the picture by either a click the touchscreen or a click on the big , general purpose smartphone button.



You should now see the photo in background . By default , you are in the mode 'aim at the jack' , so the top left icon with a cross should be activated ( white ) Aim at the jack's center usingeither  the touchscreen with you finger or the cursor keys around the general purpose button (Or the corresponding icon located on the bottom right corner of the screen). Using the touchscreen is however by far the best user experience.

Once the cross looks aiming at the center , you can still improve precision , if you like. Switch to zoom mode pressing at the smartphone general purpose button  ( Or bottom right corner icon , as you like). With any of left hand side icon activated , this button swtiches back and forth between zoom mode and
translation mode. The active mode is visualized by either 4 arrows ( translation ) or a google pair ( zoom ).
Once in zoom mode , you can know zoom with left/righ cursor keys. Switch to translation again and improve cross alignment with the jack. When satisfied,
unzoom to approximately the initial photo size.



Now that you've just set one extremity of the measure ribbon , click on the icon to set the second extremity. That is the one with an arc and an arrow.
Expand the circle utill you reach a ball , that will be the ball winning the point. This work exactly as before . You can use finger or buttons ,  and translation or zoom.

If you like numbers , you can see distance in pixel units in the bottom left cornet. That is however not required to know which ball wins.

The last icon we did not spoke about allows to move a third fictive point which is the center of the picture. You can optionaly use it to look at the scene
ar different points of interest.

Remark:

This measurment system also has the advantage of allowing to readjust a measure point ( the jack for instance ) without modifying the position
of the second measurement point ( the tangent ball for instance )



About quality

- This application is spyware free , ads free.
- Small memory footprint .
- For Android 1.5 and higher.
- Measure accuracy depends on  your smartphone. A relatively old smarphone with 480*320 pixels, provides a theoretical accuracy of 2 millimeter ( horizontaly ) , ignoring small deformations introduced by the camera lens. If like some french people you drink too much 'Pastis' while playing, precision
may decrease dramatically. ;-)