fun with bar codes

mctrivia

It is pretty cool what you can do with a cell phone now a days. There are apps out there that will let you take a picture of this and see the associated information on your phone.



▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Lots of propeller based products in stock at affordable prices.

Chris Savage

Do tell?

▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Chris Savage

Parallax Engineering
·

Leon

My new Dell Streak tablet (it uses the Android OS) has some apps for that. Here is one of them:

www.androidtapp.com/barcode-scanner/

I tried it out on the bar code above, and got taken to the Prop Modules web site.

▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Leon Heller
Amateur radio callsign: G1HSM

Post Edited (Leon) : 6/23/2010 11:33:39 PM GMT

mctrivia

Chris Savage (Parallax) said...
Do tell?

I wrote an app to generate them.
I have added parallax to the list. From any page on parallax.com you can generate one by adding the following html code.

<img src="http://zmdkl.com/qrgen/?url=[noparse][[/noparse]urlencodedurl]"&gt;

to url encode url remove special characters like =&/ and replace them with ascii values

i.e.
& -> %26
= -> %3D
/ -> %2F


in php it is easier

  function barcode($errorLevel='Q',$size=4) {
    $pageURL = 'http';
    if ($_SERVER[noparse][[/noparse]"HTTPS"] == "on") {$pageURL .= "s";}
      $pageURL .= "://";
    if ($_SERVER[noparse][[/noparse]"SERVER_PORT"] != "80") {
      $pageURL .= $_SERVER[noparse][[/noparse]"SERVER_NAME"].":".$_SERVER[noparse][[/noparse]"SERVER_PORT"].$_SERVER[noparse][[/noparse]"REQUEST_URI"];
    } else {
      $pageURL .= $_SERVER[noparse][[/noparse]"SERVER_NAME"].$_SERVER[noparse][[/noparse]"REQUEST_URI"];
    }
    echo '<img src="http://zmdkl.com/qrgen/?url=' . urlencode($pageURL) . '" border="0">';
  }
  barcode();

▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Lots of propeller based products in stock at affordable prices.

Post Edited (mctrivia) : 6/24/2010 2:20:57 PM GMT

mctrivia

Here is one for the propeller

▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Lots of propeller based products in stock at affordable prices.

Leon

That took me to the Parallax Propeller page. The app is very easy to use - I just run it, it switches on the camera with a red line in the centre of the rectangular capture area, and the bar code is read as soon as it is placed in the capture area. I then tap the displayed URL.

I tried it on the bar code of a book I bought recently: it displayed "Found book" and the ISBN. It's 9780140146905 if anyone wants to see what I am reading currently.

▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Leon Heller
Amateur radio callsign: G1HSM

Post Edited (Leon) : 6/24/2010 9:51:04 AM GMT

wjsteele

A while back I was out at Microsoft Research and they had something similar... except they were much smaller and in color. In fact, if you were clever, you could take the tags they used and make small pictures out of them. The advantage of them was that you could use them on any surface. For example, a cell phone could display a tag and another cell phone could capture that tag.

Here's the page where they announced it: blogs.msdn.com/b/tag/archive/2009/01/08/announcement-ces-2009-microsoft-tag.aspx

This article shows the size differences: www.istartedsomething.com/20090108/microsoft-tag-microsofts-own-2d-barcode/

And this is the one of the images that can be used as a tag: www.facebook.com/microsofttag#!/photo.php?pid=2191730&id=48324856532

Now we need to combine the HTTP Stuff with Hanno's vision processing and we can do it on the prop!

Bill

Post Edited (wjsteele) : 6/24/2010 1:22:39 PM GMT

mctrivia

These tags can be made smaler by droping the error correction rate from 20% to 7% and can be printed on black and white printer. They also can be dsplayed on any surface that your phone can take a picture some farmer made one in his hay field

I will check out the link though

▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Lots of propeller based products in stock at affordable prices.

mctrivia

After reading microsofts blog I see they had the same idea as me. don't encode the actual data into the bar code just a reference number. To keep things small the bar code points to my zmdkl.com domain(which means nothing i just wanted something short and all 4 letter combination where taken). They have full writes to the standard though so they can just use a simple 32 bit number if they wanted to. There system does not seem to be taking off when there are others just as easy to use that are black and white compatible and have no forced alegance to microsoft.

▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Lots of propeller based products in stock at affordable prices.

Franklin

What is this type of barcode called?

▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
- Stephen

mctrivia

QR

▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Lots of propeller based products in stock at affordable prices.

kf4ixm

If anyone is interested, heres a site to generate you own QR codes with different content types like url, text, phone number or sms...

http://qrcode.kaywa.com/

They also offer software for your mobile phone to use with QR codes.

▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
I'm just 7*10²⁷ atoms floating through time and space in close formation. -KF4IXM

Leon

I just tried it with some text, and it worked OK with the Streak. I want to try printing one.

▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Leon Heller
Amateur radio callsign: G1HSM

Leon

I printed one on my HP Deskjet printer and was able to read it without any problems.

I just had a thought - T-shirts with QR codes on them could be fun. One's name is an obvious possibility, and various ruderies for those that like that sort of thing. Any suggestions?

▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Leon Heller
Amateur radio callsign: G1HSM

Post Edited (Leon) : 6/27/2010 6:07:06 AM GMT

mctrivia

The prop one I posted earlier would be good

▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Lots of propeller based products in stock at affordable prices.