On Fri, Nov 05, 2010 at 09:52:39PM +0200, Charl wrote:

Did anyone try the ZBar open source webcam barcode reader? Is it practical to use in a library environment?

ZBar is great, but you will need do have optics on webcam that will make barcode sharp enough to be reconizable. In my expirience, webcams rearly have focus manipulation if they are built in laptops, and even external open usually can't make sharp picture for anything which is closer than 30cm or so which makes picture too small. I made even a small bounty among my friend to try different webcams, and so far noone reported succesfull scan of barcode with webcam. YMMV. I had better luck feeding zbar with pictures from digital camera, but my best expirience is with zxing on cell phones, so you might take a look at that option: http://code.google.com/p/zxing/ p.s. additional benefit of zxing is that it has support for codabar which we have on our books, but that is specific for our library. -- Dobrica Pavlinusic 2share!2flame dpavlin@rot13.org Unix addict. Internet consultant. http://www.rot13.org/~dpavlin