v2.0.0

• BlinkID now includes BlinkOCR and all it's features
• iOS updates:
  • Implemented PPCameraCoordinator. PPCameraCoordinator assumes the role of PPCoordinator from previous versions while new PPCoordinator is used for Direct API (image processing without camera out management).
  • Increased speed of scanning for barcode type recognizers.
  • Implemented PPImage. When using Direct API you can wrap UIImage and CMSampleBufferRef into PPImage to ensure optimal performance.
  • Improved performance of Direct API. In addition, you can now use Direct API with your own camera management without any performance drawbacks.
  • Added method isCameraPaused to PPScanningViewController.
  • Added option to fllip input images upside down for processing with cameraFlipped property of PPCameraSettings.
  • Implemented PPViewControllerFactory for managing creation of PPScanningViewController objects.
  • PPImageMetadata now contains PPImageMetadataType property, which describes which image type was outputted.
• Implemented templating API
  • Templating API allows creation of custom document scanners, linking specific parsers to specific locations on detected documents
• iOS bugfixes:
  • New Direct API fixed possible deadlocks when sending large amounts of data

v1.4.0

• iOS bugfixes:
  • Fixed possible deadlock in some cases when MRTD documents are scanned.
  • Fixed issue with OCR speed on arm7 devices when Accelerate framework was used.
  • Fixed incorrect returning of Address and License number in UKDL scanning.
• iOS updates:
  • PPOverlayViewController changed the way Overlay Subviews are added to the view hierarchy. Instead of calling addOverlaySubview: (which automatically added a view to view hierarachy), you now need to call registerOverlaySubview: (which registers subview for scanning events), and manually add subview to view hierarchy using addSubview: method. This change gives you more flexibility for adding views and managing autolayout and autoresizing masks.
  • Localization Macros MB_LOCALIZED and MB_LOCALIZED_FORMAT can now be overriden in your app to provide completely custom localization mechanisms.
  • Dramatically increased OCR engine initialization speed
  • Increased speed of scanning cancellation when Cancel button is pressed.
• ID scanning improvements
  • Added EUDL recognizer (replaced UKDL recognizer). EUDL is capable of automatically detecting various EU Drivers licenses. Currently it works only on German and UK DLs.
  • Fixed issue with 0 and O misclassifications in MRTD recognition
  • Added support for Austrian MRTD ID documents
• Internal changes:
  • Implementeded Templating API for easier implementation of new document types
  • Implemented Face detection
  • Implemented support for Eastern Arabic numeral characters

v1.3.0

• Added better integration for Swift
  • Added Nullability Attributes
  • Added modulemap file
  • Added sample app in Swift
• Added recognizers for scanning barcodes
  • for scanning PDF417 barcodes, use PPPdf417Recognizer
  • for scanning Code128 and Code39 barcodes, use PPBarDecoderRecognizer
  • for scanning QR codes, and other barcode types, use PPZxingRecognizer
• Refactored PPMetadataSettings
  • Added debug metadata settings for debugging payslip detection and image processing
  • successfulScanFrame renamed to successfulFrame
  • currentVideoFrame renamed to currentFrame
• Exposed PPModernViewfinderOverlaySubview overlay subview class in public headers. This enables you to more easily recreate default overlay UI in your custom Overlay view controllers.
• Added Detector API, a completely new feature which enables you to detect various document types on images. Detector API allows two types of document detections
  • MRTD detection (based on OCR line detection, for MRTD documents like passports, visas, ...)
  • Document Detection (based on edge detection, for ID cards, plastic cards, credit cards, ...)
• in PPCoordinator, renamed method isScanningUnsupported: to isScanningUnsupportedForCameraType:error:. This was introduced to provide more granularity in checking if scanning is supported.
• Fixed issues in obtaining images in scanning, most notably in MyKad scanning.
• Fixed issues with Direct API processing of UIImages in some orientations
• Fixed issues with scanning MRZ lines on arm7 devices.

v1.2.0

• Added recognition of Malysian ID cards (MyKads). To use MyKad recognition initialize the scanning library using PPMyKadRecognizerSettings
• Improvements in UK drivers license recognition. BlinkID is now tested on many more UKDL samples and yields much higher recognition rate.
• Improvements in MRTD recognition. Errors such as '0' and 'O' confusions should no longer happen. Improved MRTD document detection algorithm, which now makes old "fixed" recognition redundant. Because of that, the feature to define mrtdRoi is now removed.
• Added feature to obtain cropped and trimmed image of the whole MRTD document.
• Fixed several issues in USDL parsing
  - implemented special cases for barcodes which don't have keys according to the AAMVA version written in the barcode
  - implemented heuristics for extraction of firstName, middleName, lastName, address, and other fields, if they can be determined based on the other fields.
• Bugfixes and tweaks in camera management code
  - fixed potential deadlock when multiple instances of PPCoordinator objects are instantiated.
  - exiting from the scanning when user presses "cancel" button is now faster
• Renamed PPUkdlRecognizerResult's property ownerAdress to ownerAddress (fixed typo)

v1.1.0

• PPMrtdRecognizerSettings now sets detectMachineReadableZonePosition to YES by default. This means MRZ detection will work by default, meaning you no longer need to position the ID card precisely inside the frame shown in the UI.
• Added full support for parsing MRTD documents according to ICAO Document 9303 standard)
• Added support for scanning VISAs, and Belgian ID documents.
• PPMrtdRecognizerSettings now has a new settings allowUnparsedResults (default: NO), which you can use to get raw OCR results of the MRZ text, even if BlinkID parsing didn't manage to parse the text (this can happen since MRZ isn't always formatted according to ICAO Document 9303 standard)
  • When YES, MrtdRecognizerResult will be returned with isParsed property set to NO, and with rawOcrLayout property set to the PPOcrLayout object which was the result of the OCR process.
  • You should be careful when this property is set to YES, since obtained OcrLayout can contain OCR errors (for example (0 <-> O, 2 <-> Z, etc.). If you set this to YES, then you need to perform your own parsing and error correction.
  • If you set this to YES, we suggest the following approach in your result callback
    • obtain mrtdResult
    • if [mrtdResult isParsed]
      • present result and return
        • else if mrtdResult can be parsed with your custom parsing algorithm
      • present your custom results and return
        • else continue scanning since MRTD result cannot be parsed at all
• Improved video frame quality detection: now only the sharpest and the most focused frames are being processed. This improves quality of the results, but at a slight expense of processing time
• Frame quality estimation can now be enabled using PPScanSettings frameQualityEstimationMode property:
  • when set to PPFrameQualityEstimationModeOn, frame quality estimation is always enabled
  • when set to PPFrameQualityEstimationModeOff, frame quality estimation is always disabled
  • when set to PPFrameQualityEstimationModeDefault, frame quality estimation is enabled internally, if the SDK determines it makes sense
• iOS 9 introduced new app multitasking features Split View and Slide Over. When the scanner is on screen and one of those features are used, iOS automatically pauses the Camera (this behaviour is default as of iOS 9 beta 5). This SDK version introduces new setting in PPUISettings class, called cameraPausedView, where you can define the UIView which is presented centered on screen when this happens.
• Known issue on iOS 9: if you use Autorotate overlay feature (settings.uiSetttings.autorotateOverlay), present PPScanningViewController as a modal view controller, and support Split View iOS 9 feature, then autorotation of camera overlays isn't correct. The best way is to opt-out of Split View feature, and wait for SDK fix when iOS 9 comes out of beta.
• PPScanningViewController methods pauseScanning, isScanningPaused, and resumeScanningAndResetState: should now be called only from Main thread, and they are effective immediately. E.g., if pauseScanning is called and there is a video frame being processed, result of processing of that frame will be discarded, if resumeScanningAndResetState: isn't called in the meantime.
• Added support for PPCameraPresetPhoto camera preset. Use this if you need the same zoom level as in iOS Camera app. The resolution for video feed when using this preset is the same as devices screen resolution.

v1.0.1

• Added support for several new special cases of US Driver Licenses in USDL recognizer.
• Disabled Bitcode in Sample apps so that they are buildable with XCode 7 (Bitcode support in the framework coming soon!)
• Added library dependencies in podspec without which the app after integration couldn't be built

v1.0.0

• Initial official BlinkID SDK version
• Added CocoaPods integration and travis-ci validation
• Changes in Direct processing API
  • You are no longer required to call PPCoordinator initializeRecognizers and PPCoordinator terminateRecognizers.
  • Instead, initializeRecognizers is called lazily on first call of processImage method.
  • terminateRecognizers is called automatically in PPCoordinator destructor
• Added support for autorotation of PPScanningViewController. To support autorotation, use PPScanningViewController's new properties autorotate and supportedOrientations
• Added didOutputMetadata: callback method to PPOverlayViewControllers
• Fixed bug which caused Overlay events to be called when direct API is used. Direct API now only reports events to PPScanDelegate instance.
• Fixed bug which caused image property of PPImageMetadata not take the image orientation into account
• PPMetadataSettings cleanup
• PPApp class no longer part of public API