Android Studio ML kit cannot load OCR module

Question

I am working on an android app that involves ML kit. I went through the tutorial on how to set up Android Studio to work with Firebase. Then I headed to use the text recognition API. Here is the code that I am having in some button click listener:

        FirebaseVisionTextRecognizer detector = FirebaseVision.getInstance()
            .getOnDeviceTextRecognizer();
        Task<FirebaseVisionText> result = detector.processImage(
            FirebaseVisionImage.fromBitmap(BitmapFactory.decodeResource(getResources(), R.drawable.test))
        )
            .addOnSuccessListener(new OnSuccessListener<FirebaseVisionText>() {
                @Override
                public void onSuccess(FirebaseVisionText firebaseVisionText) {
                    System.out.println(firebaseVisionText);
                }
            })
            .addOnFailureListener(new OnFailureListener() {
                @Override
                public void onFailure(@NonNull Exception e) {
                    e.printStackTrace();
                }
            });

I get the following logs:

W/DynamiteModule: Local module descriptor class for com.google.android.gms.vision.dynamite.ocr not found.
I/DynamiteModule: Considering local module com.google.android.gms.vision.dynamite.ocr:0 and remote module com.google.android.gms.vision.dynamite.ocr:0
D/TextNativeHandle: Cannot load feature, fall back to load dynamite module.
W/DynamiteModule: Local module descriptor class for com.google.android.gms.vision.ocr not found.
I/DynamiteModule: Considering local module com.google.android.gms.vision.ocr:0 and remote module com.google.android.gms.vision.ocr:0
E/Vision: Error loading module com.google.android.gms.vision.ocr optional module true: com.google.android.gms.dynamite.DynamiteModule$LoadingException: No acceptable module found. Local version is 0 and remote version is 0.
D/TextNativeHandle: Broadcasting download intent for dependency ocr
W/TextNativeHandle: Native handle not yet available. Reverting to no-op handle.
W/DynamiteModule: Local module descriptor class for com.google.android.gms.vision.dynamite.ocr not found.
I/DynamiteModule: Considering local module com.google.android.gms.vision.dynamite.ocr:0 and remote module com.google.android.gms.vision.dynamite.ocr:0
D/TextNativeHandle: Cannot load feature, fall back to load dynamite module.
W/DynamiteModule: Local module descriptor class for com.google.android.gms.vision.ocr not found.
I/DynamiteModule: Considering local module com.google.android.gms.vision.ocr:0 and remote module com.google.android.gms.vision.ocr:0
E/Vision: Error loading module com.google.android.gms.vision.ocr optional module true: com.google.android.gms.dynamite.DynamiteModule$LoadingException: No acceptable module found. Local version is 0 and remote version is 0.
W/System.err: com.google.firebase.ml.common.FirebaseMLException: Waiting for the text recognition model to be downloaded. Please wait.
        at com.google.android.gms.internal.firebase_ml.zzrw.zzd(com.google.firebase:firebase-ml-vision@@24.0.0:21)
        at com.google.android.gms.internal.firebase_ml.zzrw.zza(com.google.firebase:firebase-ml-vision@@24.0.0:39)
        at com.google.android.gms.internal.firebase_ml.zzpd.zza(com.google.firebase:firebase-ml-common@@22.0.0:31)
        at com.google.android.gms.internal.firebase_ml.zzpf.call(Unknown Source:8)
        at com.google.android.gms.internal.firebase_ml.zzoz.zza(com.google.firebase:firebase-ml-common@@22.0.0:32)
        at com.google.android.gms.internal.firebase_ml.zzoy.run(Unknown Source:4)
        at android.os.Handler.handleCallback(Handler.java:873)
W/System.err:     at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99)
        at com.google.android.gms.internal.firebase_ml.zze.dispatchMessage(com.google.firebase:firebase-ml-common@@22.0.0:6)
        at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:193)
        at android.os.HandlerThread.run(HandlerThread.java:65)

I googled around to see how I can fix any of those errors:

W/DynamiteModule: Local module descriptor class for com.google.android.gms.vision.dynamite.ocr not found.
I/DynamiteModule: Considering local module com.google.android.gms.vision.dynamite.ocr:0 and remote module com.google.android.gms.vision.dynamite.ocr:0
D/TextNativeHandle: Cannot load feature, fall back to load dynamite module.
W/DynamiteModule: Local module descriptor class for com.google.android.gms.vision.ocr not found.
I/DynamiteModule: Considering local module com.google.android.gms.vision.ocr:0 and remote module com.google.android.gms.vision.ocr:0
E/Vision: Error loading module com.google.android.gms.vision.ocr optional module true: com.google.android.gms.dynamite.DynamiteModule$LoadingException: No acceptable module found. Local version is 0 and remote version is 0.

W/System.err: com.google.firebase.ml.common.FirebaseMLException: Waiting for the text recognition model to be downloaded. Please wait.

So far I have tried clearing Google Play Services data (version 19.4.20), restarting/recreating the emulator, tweaking Gradle configurations (e.g. adding/removing firebase-core dependency). Project-level config:

// Top-level build file where you can add configuration options common to all sub-projects/modules.

buildscript {
    repositories {
        google()
        jcenter()

    }
    dependencies {
        classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:3.5.1'
        classpath 'com.google.gms:google-services:4.3.2'

        // NOTE: Do not place your application dependencies here; they belong
        // in the individual module build.gradle files
    }
}

allprojects {
    repositories {
        google()
        jcenter()

    }
}

task clean(type: Delete) {
    delete rootProject.buildDir
}

App-module-level config:

apply plugin: 'com.android.application'

android {
    compileSdkVersion 29
    buildToolsVersion "29.0.2"
    defaultConfig {
        applicationId "com.example.user.app"
        minSdkVersion 24
        targetSdkVersion 29
        versionCode 1
        versionName "1.0"
        testInstrumentationRunner "androidx.test.runner.AndroidJUnitRunner"
    }
    buildTypes {
        release {
            minifyEnabled false
            proguardFiles getDefaultProguardFile('proguard-android-optimize.txt'), 'proguard-rules.pro'
        }
    }
}

dependencies {
    implementation fileTree(dir: 'libs', include: ['*.jar'])
    implementation 'androidx.appcompat:appcompat:1.1.0'
    implementation 'androidx.constraintlayout:constraintlayout:1.1.3'
    implementation 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-vision:19.0.0'
    implementation 'com.google.firebase:firebase-ml-vision:24.0.0'
    testImplementation 'junit:junit:4.12'
    androidTestImplementation 'androidx.test:runner:1.2.0'
    androidTestImplementation 'androidx.test.espresso:espresso-core:3.2.0'

}

apply plugin: 'com.google.gms.google-services'

I decided to give Barcode API a shot, and added

implementation 'com.google.firebase:firebase-ml-vision-barcode-model:16.0.1'

as dependency. To my surprise, when I made an API call to it, the success listner was hit and the following logs appeared:

I/DynamiteModule: Considering local module com.google.firebase.ml.vision.dynamite.barcode:10000 and remote module com.google.firebase.ml.vision.dynamite.barcode:0
    Selected local version of com.google.firebase.ml.vision.dynamite.barcode
W/is.moneytravel: Accessing hidden field Ljava/nio/Buffer;->address:J (light greylist, reflection)
I/tflite: Initialized TensorFlow Lite runtime.
I/native: barcode_detector_client.cc:222 Not using NNAPI

While the OCR API still produced the same error. I think it has to deal with the repositories the libraries are fetched from. Barcode API:

Considering local module com.google.firebase.ml.vision.dynamite.barcode:10000 and remote module com.google.firebase.ml.vision.dynamite.barcode:0

OCR API:

Considering local module com.google.android.gms.vision.dynamite.ocr:0 and remote module com.google.android.gms.vision.dynamite.ocr:0

I have too little experience with Gradle and Firebase to figure this one out. Why is OCR API fetched from android.gms, while Barcode API comes from firebase.ml?

Answer 1

The solution was to update Google Play Services app. I did not consider this as an option at first as I would have expected an API 29 emulator to have an up-to-date Google Play Services installed. I signed into Google Play on the emulator, searched Google Play Services, uninstalled it (there was no "update" option), and installed it again. It still says that the installed version is 19.4.20 though the text recognition started working as expected. Here are some relevant logs:

W/DynamiteModule: Local module descriptor class for com.google.android.gms.vision.dynamite.ocr not found.
I/DynamiteModule: Considering local module com.google.android.gms.vision.dynamite.ocr:0 and remote module com.google.android.gms.vision.dynamite.ocr:0
D/TextNativeHandle: Cannot load feature, fall back to load dynamite module.
I/DynamiteModule: Considering local module com.google.android.gms.vision.ocr:0 and remote module com.google.android.gms.vision.ocr:1
I/DynamiteModule: Selected remote version of com.google.android.gms.vision.ocr, version >= 1
V/DynamiteModule: Dynamite loader version >= 2, using loadModule2NoCrashUtils

Answer 2

Try adding following in your AndroidManifest.xml

<application>
    ...

    <meta-data android:name="com.google.android.gms.vision.DEPENDENCIES" android:value="ocr"/>

</application>

Documentation can be found at https://developers.google.com/ml-kit/vision/text-recognition/android