What is Reddit's opinion of ZBar bar code reader?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

You do know the 2d barcode has more information on it then the front of your license? I would say a scan of the 2d barcode IS a full scan.

But since it was issued by the state of Iowa and I am submitting it to a government authority I don't really care.
Here is an open source implementation you can use to view what is on the back of your ID: http://zbar.sourceforge.net/

We have to manage data shipped to us from clients that comes in all kinds of media that we have to keep track of and store.

We buy barcode labels from here: http://www.mavericklabel.com/barcode-labels.html

Then we have an app based on Zbar (http://zbar.sourceforge.net/) That takes in the drive info (client name, date shipped, date recieved, date data staged), we can the barcode sticker we put on the drive and it stores it in a SQL database.

Total cost was a scanner, and what we pay for the barcodes, which we buy in bulk so they're cheap.

EDIT: For storage of drives we use foam boxes that we got from our SAN vendors when they ship us drives we purchase for storing the data we stage from teh drives., so they're basically $0, and we're reusing them for the environment!

EDIT2: Sorry I'm dribbling info in, our media guys keep updating me with more info. The app also has barcodes attached to the storage boxes, so when a drive come in, it's labeled, scanned, placed in a box, then the BOX is also scanned as part of the record. That way they can search for what box a particular drive is in/etc. All the fields are also searchable.

Sure I'm thinking of using http://zbar.sourceforge.net/ for barcode scanning. Do you want to split this up - one of us can figure out the barcode scan and the other getting it to send to their server?

PM me.

Hi, I have recent encounter with Zxing library and I can save you some time by telling you that you should not use it. Instead I suggest you use http://zbar.sourceforge.net/, which is way faster and easier to make custom implementations. The landscape/portrait issue is also solved (Zxing comes only with landscape orientation; orientation switches and changes can be found on stack, which might not work in your case).

Use zbar, at http://zbar.sourceforge.net

From the readme:

>ZBar Bar Code Reader is an open source software suite for reading bar codes from various sources, such as video streams, image files and raw intensity sensors. It supports EAN-13/UPC-A, UPC-E, EAN-8, Code 128, Code 39, Interleaved 2 of 5 and QR Code. Included with the library are basic applications for decoding captured bar code images and using a video device (eg, webcam) as a bar code scanner. For application developers, language bindings are included for C, C++, Python and Perl as well as GUI widgets for Qt, GTK and PyGTK.

GS1-128 is Code 128. I'm not familiar with HIN.

QR codes are cool because easy to read by a computer from paper. For the NYANOTES, you could use zbar http://zbar.sourceforge.net/ or another software to decode them, just feed the software with the NYANOTE, you'll get the private key.

You can also download an offline barcode generator app, e.g. Zint which works on both Windows and Linux desktop.

If you have an air-gapped machine, you might want to use an offline QR code scanner too, e.g. ZBar which is also featured in Electrum and Electron Cash wallets.

I think someone even developed a Monero wallet that syncs with an online computer using QR codes. Something similar to ancient IrDA standard or Timex watch, but with video cameras and monitors. Can't remember the project name.

I was working on a project where I wanted to do exactly this. What I ended up using was ZBar. They have downloads for both Windows/Linux available. For testing purposes I would grab the original picture and save it, then use PHP to save a copy as grayscale and adjust the contrast and brightness to make it easier for ZBar to read it. There was some trial and error there. After that I would run the command line of it via PHP script and it returned the barcode contents and what type of barcode it was:

exec('C:\"Program Files (x86)"\ZBar\bin\zbarimg -v ' . $pathToImage, $result);

If you want my messy testing JS+PHP (it lets you upload a picture or take one from a camera) feel free to PM me.

If you're doing it to learn computer vision techniques, the recommended tutorial from hwillis is great.

If you just need it done, rather than doing it as a learning exercise, I'd recommend ZBar (http://zbar.sourceforge.net). I used it previously and it does a pretty awesome job of qr detection, provided the code takes up enough of the image. It's rotation (and largely, scale) invariant, handles detection and decoding and is free and open source.

If the qr code is relatively small, it might be worth doing some image processing in advance to make its life easier. I used the gradients of the image to detect qr-type regions to subsequently test with ZBar: the nature of qr codes means they show pretty well as high frequency gradient regions.

Since you're tracking, you could maybe make informed choices of where to look with ZBar based on the motion of the camera/object, either with optical flow directly or using a kalman filtering type approach based on previous directions.

Speaking of tracking; my guess is you'd probably need to implement some logic on top to record where you've seen a given code based on your detections from ZBar. Might also need to do some interpolation as it's likely you'll get some misses due to motion blur, etc.

There's a Linux app called zbarimg. It looks like it's built on the ImageMagick library. A Windows application called ZBar is multiplatform. I don't have any direct experience, I've just helped someone who used the Linux app.

That would be awesome! I've never done apps before, and the connection to a database - from a device that may not have a stable connection - seems like a challenge as well. I've only done some googling around to figure out how I'd have to do this. I think I can use Zbar's opensource code for the scanner. I'll need to either use my mothers mac laptop, or install osx on a virtual box to get access to the app development software. The actual database isn't really a problem, I just need a list of 1000 entries, with participant names, startnumber and their starting status (Not started, started, dropped out, finished).

The problems, in order, are getting access to iphone app development software, getting Zbar to work, figuring out the database connection (after scanning a number, it should display the participants name and update their status), and building the apps graphical interface.

> what do you do do once you have your paper wallets printed? (i don't have an android smartphone to scan the QR)

When I'm not using my phone, I use a computer with a webcam and Zbarcam to easily decode the QR. :3

I would suggest using tesseract. It's a OCR engine, and its pretty handy. Here's a link to an android project using it. If your feeling really wily then you can try opencv and design your own text detection using ORB or SURF or something. But that is overkill, and I would go with tesseract.

Oh I forgot to mention zbar. If the id's have a barcode or qrcode on the backs of the or something, you could easily use those to ID them aswell.

Thanks! I have heard of ZBar but never used it.

The documentation says it only supports iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4, which makes me think it's not in active development. Does it work well with iOS 7?

I'm not sure what your goal is, and redlaser apparently changed their API (it used to be an interesting thing where you'd put a 'web app' on your homepage which just sent a URI specification to redlaser, the app, which could then launch the URI + barcode however you pleased) to be one that's pay.

Anywho, check these out:

https://code.google.com/p/zxing/

http://zbar.sourceforge.net/iphone/index.html

/r/simpleios (in the sidebar here...)