Barcode reading using picture taken using mobile phone camera

Question

How do we do programmatic reading of a barcode that is captured using a mobile phone camera? For example, how do that using iPhone or Android or Java ME? Do we need separate har

Answer 1

Obviously it's possible to read the bar code from an image of it. You probably need to think about issues like

• Orientation; perhaps the photo is not straight-on, so the bars aren't vertical. Also, it might be upside-down ...
• Focus; what if the shot is blurry? There probably is a limit where it becomes impossible to interpret it safely.
• Cropped; what if the framing is bad, so the entire code isn't even in the image?

There are lots of existing projects and products that solve this ... Here is one, for instance. Some solutions seem to not be very sensitive to points like those above, but claim to be able to find and recognize bar codes regardless of orientation and location in the image, for instance.