LOTA vs Refbox Mobile
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
LOTA
Transform your iPhone into a professional capture device. Stream live camera, depth, point clouds, and motion data to creative tools like TouchDesigner and OBS without needing extra hardware. Offers advanced features like material capture and live transcription.
- Live camera and depth streaming
- Point cloud and Gaussian splat generation
- Material map baking for PBR shaders
- Blob tracking capabilities
- Motion and audio data streaming
- Live speech-to-text transcription
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LOTA: LiDAR Over The Air Your iPhone is already a professional capture device. LOTA unlocks it. Stream live camera, depth, point clouds, motion data, audio analysis, and speech transcription straight from your iPhone into TouchDesigner, OBS, vMix, Resolume, Notch, or any NDI-compatible application. No rigs, no capture cards, no expensive sensors. What you can capture - Camera and Depth: live RGB, monochrome, and LiDAR depth video with nine selectable colormaps. - Point Clouds and Gaussian Splats: real-time colored 3D point clouds you can paint by walking around your subject. Export ready for COLMAP, Nerfstudio, gsplat, and Blender. - Material Capture: tap a surface, lock the plane, and bake albedo, roughness, and normal maps for PBR shaders. - Blob Tracking: replace a Kinect plus Blob Track TOP with a single phone. Works on a moving camera, no background plate required. - Motion: stream acceleration, gyroscope, compass, and barometric pressure over OSC for sound and visual reactivity. - Audio Analysis: real-time levels, beats, and frequency band analysis streamed over OSC. - Live Transcription: turn the iPhone into a wireless speech-to-text source for creative tools. How it streams NDI for video over IP, OSC for tracking and sensor data, TCP and UDP for compressed video and raw depth, and a dedicated point cloud channel for TouchDesigner. All transports auto-discoverable, all independently toggle-able. Works on every iPhone LiDAR-equipped iPhones unlock the full feature set. Non-LiDAR phones use an on-device AI depth fallback and every non-depth mode. LOTA is free. No subscriptions. No telemetry. Just sensors, on the network, where you need them.
Refbox Mobile
Organize your creative inspiration with a visual reference board. Collect and arrange images from your device or the web into project-specific "Boxes." Browse your collection fluidly and access images fullscreen for detailed review.
- Create project-specific "Boxes"
- Add images from device or web
- Fluid masonry canvas browsing
- Fullscreen image view
- Select multiple images for actions
- Organize without clutter
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Refbox is a fast, easy-to-use visual reference board for collecting and organizing images to inspire your creative work. Create Boxes for projects, moods, subjects, or styles. Add images from your device or drag and drop from the web. Browse everything on a fluid masonry canvas, open any image fullscreen for a closer look, and select multiple images to move, share, or delete them at once. Keep your references organized without getting buried in folders or clutter. Refbox is built for artists, designers, photographers, and other visual thinkers who want their reference library by their side as they work.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Refbox Mobile at 5.0 against LOTA's 3.0. Refbox Mobile also leads on ratings volume (8 vs 2). On price, ads, in-app purchases and monetization model there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Refbox Mobile holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 3.0. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 2 and 8 respectively.
| Parameter | LOTA | Refbox Mobile |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 3.0 (2 ratings) | 5.0 (8 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | — | 100.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 2 | 8 — better |
| Update frequency | — | Every 6 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 26.2 | 26.2 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 62 MB | 7 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Arturo Villalobos | Brett Shepherd |
In-app purchases
LOTA
No in-app purchases
Refbox Mobile
No in-app purchases









