Barcode Scanner (application)

Barcode Scanner (aka ZXing or Zebra Crossing)
Developer(s) Sean Owen, Daniel Switkin, ZXing Team
Initial release 1 March 2008 (2008-03-01)
Stable release 4.7.5 / 8 November 2015 (2015-11-08)
Written in Java
Operating system Android
License Apache License 2.0
Website Main site
Google Play
Barcode Scanner scanning a QR code

The application Barcode Scanner is an Android app, from the open source project ZXing (short for Zebra Crossing), that allows a user to scan 1-D or 2-D "graphical barcodes" with the camera on their Android device. The program turns that scan into the original data that is represented by the barcode. This allows the user to get to web addresses, geographical coordinates, small pieces of text, and much more just by pointing their device's camera at a barcode. In this way the android based system works almost like a conventional Barcode Reader except that it is only composed of commodity hardware and this software application.

There are many different types of barcodes that are supported by this application, in addition to the original 1-D barcode. These are commonly provided on products such as food, books, clothing, DVDs, and most other products sold commercially. When the Barcode Scanner application scans the 1-D barcode on one of these types of items, it can automatically search the web for that product. With this functionality, the application can enable the user to quickly do comparisons between the price of an item they are looking at in a store with prices from online retailers.

The most common 2-D barcodes that can be read by this application are QR code and Data Matrix barcodes. QR codes are often embedded in websites so that when users are browsing the website on their desktop or laptop and want to transfer a link, product, or application to their Android device, they can quickly point their camera at the screen and using the Barcode Scanner application, get that data from the website.

This is one of the most popular overall android applications, as listed by the Google Play, with over 300,000 ratings and over 80 million downloads as of February 2013.[1][2]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "BarcodeScanner". Google Play.
  2. ↑ "Google Play Store, United States, Top Overall, Free". Distimo.

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Friday, February 19, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.