CarbCam About

About CarbCam

CarbCam is a photo-based app for carb estimation for people with diabetes — focused on accuracy, privacy, and a clear, fast workflow for everyday use.

The app is available on iOS and Android and is functionally identical across both stores. The shared core is written as a Kotlin Multiplatform Module, while the UI is native (SwiftUI on iOS, Jetpack Compose on Android).

The Idea

CarbCam was born from the 10be ecosystem — originally to complement the hosting for Nightscout on ns.10be.de with a user-friendly photo tool.

Estimating carbohydrates at the dinner table is one of the most frequently repeated micro-tasks in daily diabetes management. One camera, one tap, one well-founded estimate — that is the idea.

Platform & Architecture

iOS
  • iOS 16+
  • SwiftUI, Swift 5.9+
Android
  • Android 8+
  • Jetpack Compose, Kotlin
Shared Module

Kotlin Multiplatform — nutrition logic, Nightscout wire, I18n, validation, formula calculation. Single source of truth.

Server

ns.10be.de — analysis proxy to five AI providers (Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, OpenAI, Zhipu, Azure OpenAI), feedback system, update distribution, status page.

Open-Source Libraries Used

CarbCam uses these libraries — many thanks to the maintainers:

iOS-specific
  • TOCropViewController MIT — Image cropping
  • Apple Vision — Barcode detection & local image analysis
Android-specific
  • Jetpack Compose Apache 2.0 — UI toolkit
  • Room Apache 2.0 — Local DB
  • Google Maps Compose Apache 2.0 — Maps & Location
  • Coil Apache 2.0 — Image loading
  • Retrofit / OkHttp Apache 2.0 — HTTP (Square)
  • ML Kit Barcode Apache 2.0 — Barcode scanner (Google)
Shared (Kotlin Multiplatform)
  • Kotlin & Coroutines Apache 2.0 — JetBrains
  • Ktor Apache 2.0 — HTTP for KMP
  • kotlinx.serialization Apache 2.0
  • kotlinx.datetime Apache 2.0
Build & Tooling
  • XcodeGen MIT — iOS project generation
  • Gradle — Build

Full license details per library are available in the app under Settings → Open-Source Libraries.

Data Sources

CarbCam uses the following external data sources to validate AI estimates:

USDA FoodData Central

Standard nutritional values for foods

fdc.nal.usda.gov
Open Food Facts

Product database for barcode lookup

openfoodfacts.org
OpenStreetMap / Nominatim

Reverse geocoding for location name (local only)

openstreetmap.org
Stripe

Payment processing, subscription management & invoices

stripe.com

Contact & Feedback

  • In-App: Settings → Send Feedback
  • Email: support@ns.10be.de
  • Feedback Status: Settings → Feedback Status
Tip: A clear description plus optionally the meal in question is usually enough for us to handle bugs and support requests.