I do some book scouting can would like to use a barcode scanner of some type to read isbn on books,etc and check against info stored on a seperate disk or in my
memory that has been downloaded from one of the many companys that offer amazon,ebay ,etc prices can i do anything like this? this would save me from buying a seperate scouting tool (pda and scanner web access cell phone,etc) not good at all this computer stuff any help greatly appreciated

i forgot to mention that i want to find this scanner for a nokia 810 i forgot to mention which nokia I have

@rek

Search this forum for "barcode" (no quotes)

There are several threads that are interesting and may have leads to what you are looking for.

I have been eying a pen style scanner that radio shack put out several years ago (can't remember the name ) for just this purpose. IIRC from reading the other threads, it is possible to use an USB scanner but the interface / program would have to be written...

Hope this helps

Good Luck

Snoshrk

I think there is something about barcode scanning in the GNU Ocr thread.

I'm currently writing an app to do this, using the camera to do the scanning. I've been learning GTK+ and the C interface to SQLite along the way, so is still work in progress, but the code compiles and hopefully gives a decent idea of what I'm trying to achieve.

See https://garage.maemo.org/projects/maemo-barcode/ and specifically the branch I'm working on atm: https://garage.maemo.org/plugins/scm...=maemo-barcode

Using a plug-in scanner as well/instead shouldn't be an issue and I'd like to include this (if you find a cheapish scanner do let me know; life will be easier with the higher quality and pointing outwards camera on the n900).

My plan is to let the user create different tables in an SQLite database (e.g. shopping list, DVDs I own, Books I own, Books I want, DVDs I want, CDs, etc.) so that the user can do a couple of things:

Have a list of the DVDs/CDs/Books they own, so they can check in the shop to see if they're going to buy something they already have (I have this problem with books and DVDs, because I have lots of the former and because I don't tend to watch the latter often enough to remember what I do have).

If the book/DVD/CD in question is not in the db (i.e. you don't own it), allow the barcode (and metadata obtained from the barcode, e.g. isbn from barcode) to be saved and looked up (I need to write some code for a backend server or some web trawling code for the app on the device) to fill in the details of what the item in question is. There are a number of online services which allow this, iirc I left some notes in the source (see above).

I also plan to allow text searches of this data (i.e. the databases will be populated with the barcodes and then these can all be looked up when a connection is available and then the db can be searched using text strings too, just in case the scanner doesn't work/someone asks you a question without giving you a barcode).

Looking at the web trawling, I want to do similar to the Android competition winner Android Scan (http://scan.jsharkey.org/) and once a barcode has been scanned it will be looked up (i.e. fill in desctiption) and also have prices and locations downloaded so you can see if it's cheaper online, etc. This will be easier on the n900 as it will be always connected.

Last but not least are different types of barcodes, 1D stacked, 2D (QR code, Datamatrix) which can store text, urls, etc. We've been working on getting these to be decoded in realtime, and would like to add these in so people can scan them and use the data contained therein (e.g. display/save text, open url, etc.)

I hope that makes some sort of sense

FYI:
The USB scanner I have been looking at is the CueCat, ~$10 on eBay.

@lardman

How well does your program work with the N800's camera?

thx

If you're talking about the "cuecat", I just picked one up from e-bay for about $15 (incl. shipping). RadioShack used to give them out years ago. Those on e-bay have been modified for USB and to take out some of the cue-cat specific encoding (originals did something funny with the scancodes, and were PS/2 connected).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat

It works a treat -- I plug it in to my laptop (running fedora), and it looks like a HID/keyboard type of device. You scan, and input comes in as ASCII terminated with a carriage-return (works great with "gcstar" for scanning in my book collection).

I'd think, though, if the nerd-alarms weren't already going off with you pulling out the NIT, then definitely nerd-alerts would be going off by you pulling out the cat-shaped scanner, and start scanning books. I've already heard of stories of people getting booted out of book stores for scanning and looking up cheaper options online. (Retailers have never taken kindly to "price checkers", and this seems to be arising again with the new iphone/G1 applications...).

I'd prefer a camera based scanner -- a little more subtle ....

@fattomm

Yes that is the one I have been looking at

I agree 100%, A camera based scanner would be the preferable solution.

I am in awe of the people on this forum who have the skills / talent to make so many of the cool things for our tablets...

The cuecat works quite well, but it is unfortunately cat-shaped.

I helped create a barcode scanning system for use in a warehouse, using the Nokia 770. Using an N800 (and I assume an 810) is easier because of the OTG adapter that can be used.

The barcode scanner sends the scanned code to the device (PC, N800) as a character string...just as if you had typed it in via keyboard. All conversion takes place in the scanner itself, so you do not need any software to interpret the scan. The cuecat, as mentioned in an earlier post, did some type of conversion when it scanned, so you might not be able to get a clean scan (although I seem to recall that it handled IBSN codes correctly).

We were not able to get laser scanner working on our system as it required too much power from the host to work (we used a powered usb hub and the 770 host mode did not provide power as I recall), but a CCD scanner worked fine. I would think a pen-type scanner would be best in terms of a smaller form factor as well.

Good luck (and now I am out to my garage to see if I can get one of my cuecats to work with my n800!)

ET

I would really like to see lardman's camera-based barcode scanner working! It seems to me that the most important part is getting the translation of barcode to ASCII working. If you can get that ASCII code, you could use something like pipeline's DBus Switchboard to send the code as a parameter to user-defined applications.

And yes, as far as I am aware, getting this working on the N810 will mean it will work on the N800 too.