Amazon’s new Part Finder helps you shop for those odd nuts and bolts

Got an odd screw, nut, bolt, washer or fastener you need to buy more of, but have no idea to how to find the right one? Amazon’s “Part Finder” can help. The company has rolled out a new feature on mobile that lets you point your camera at the item in question, so Amazon can scan it, measure it, then direct you to matching items from its product catalog.

The company didn’t announce the feature’s launch, but confirmed to us it was rolled out to all users a couple of weeks ago.

The feature takes advantage of the iPhone’s camera to measure the object in question – a process it walks you through when you first launch “Part Finder” by tapping the Camera button next to the search box in the Amazon app.

This is the area where Amazon has added a number of product-finding functions that let consumers search for products without entering text. For example, here is where you’ll find the barcode scanner, the image recognition-based product search, package X-Ray, Smilecode scanner, AR View, and more.

, Amazon’s new Part Finder helps you shop for those odd nuts and bolts, #Bizwhiznetwork.com Innovation ΛI

To use Part Finder, you first tap the icon to launch the feature, then place the object on a white surface next to a penny, as instructed. (A piece of white paper worked well.)

The instructions explain how to correctly tilt the phone in order to measure the part. This involves a display of a crosshairs and circle that appear on the white surface in the camera’s viewfinder. You tilt the phone until the circle is lined up in the center of the crosshairs.

Amazon’s app then scans the item and delivers results, assuming the product is in focus and you’ve followed the instructions properly.

, Amazon’s new Part Finder helps you shop for those odd nuts and bolts, #Bizwhiznetwork.com Innovation ΛI

On the following screen, you add more information to help narrow down the results. For example, we scanned a screw and it asked for other details like whether it was a flat head and the drive type. (Some of this information could have been derived from the scan, one would think, so it’s not clear how much Amazon is relying on the scan itself versus user input here.)

Of course, a screw is an easier thing to find on Amazon. The feature will be a lot more handy when you’re stuck with an odd part that you don’t know how to identify. Unfortunately, we don’t currently have a bunch of unintended parts lying around to test.

, Amazon’s new Part Finder helps you shop for those odd nuts and bolts, #Bizwhiznetwork.com Innovation ΛI

 

The Part Finder feature is currently showing up in Amazon’s app on iOS. No word yet on its Android release.

The Part Finder uses computer vision technology, not augmented reality, we’ve learned. An earlier version of this post said otherwise. We’ve updated the article to reflect this.

The feature is currently capable of identifying over 100 types of fasteners which represents thousands, if not millions of parts, Amazon says.

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