Comments | rdmaughan: Barcode Scanner

rdmaughan

Barcode Scanner

Jul 02, 2009 07:33

Does anyone have a barcode scanner I could borrow for a couple of weeks? I know this is not exactly a standard household item but many of my friends are not exactly standard households.

ETA: Sorted, a work colleague of my better half has one.

Comments 17

keristor July 2 2009, 08:14:24 UTC

There's an iPhone application which will scan barcodes, if you either have one or know someone close who has one. fleetfootmike knows about it, I've seen him use it.

rdmaughan July 2 2009, 08:23:01 UTC

Unfortunately I work for a mobile network other than the one who has the UK iphone contract so I don't have an iphone. As I am looking to scan several thousand items I doubt I will find an iphone owner who will lend me there phone for long enough to get through all of what I want to do.

However if it works on the ipod touch then it might push me into buying one of those. Thanks

armb July 2 2009, 09:49:55 UTC

Would http://code.google.com/p/zxing/ work on your phone?
Or does http://en.semapedia.org/ list something that does?
http://sourceforge.net/projects/readbarj/ ?

rdmaughan July 2 2009, 10:09:28 UTC

I don't have a personal phone, only a company one. The comments about the Blackberry version of the reader is less than encouraging even if I was prepared to install software on to the company phone which I'm not.

Thread 5

rinioth July 2 2009, 08:47:40 UTC

It looks like they are less than 30 quid on Ebay for a USB interfaced one.

rdmaughan July 2 2009, 08:55:55 UTC

I am looking at a website which allows you to store all your book details online by entering the ISBN. A scanner is the simplest way to do this but I would like to try it out and decide if I like the service before I spend money on a scanner, hence my interest in wondering if I could borrow one.

rinioth July 2 2009, 09:02:14 UTC

Most of the scanners seem to work by being in the keyboard cable (they have ps2 connectors to enable you to do kbd > scanner > PC).

I suspect that you could just type in a barcode and it would look the same as the scanner input.

rdmaughan July 2 2009, 09:05:49 UTC

Using this service means entering all of books I have. Part of the test is how quick and how annoying will this process be with a scanner. While typing in an ISBN will let me decide if I like the web site, it won't tell me if I have the stamina to work through and scan all of my books. I already know I won't use this service if I have to do all the entry by hand.

Thread 10

(The comment has been removed)

rdmaughan July 2 2009, 09:30:04 UTC

Funnily enough, Librarything is what I'm looking at. If I like it after trying the test, I'll order one of their scanners and get it shipped to my sister-in-law's place in the USA to bring back next time we are over.

Thanks for the offer, I'll see if anyone closer has one before taking you up on it though. Miramon is throwing a party this weekend and there is a reasonable chance someone coming will have one I could cadge for a while and return at the Unicon.

keristor July 2 2009, 18:09:26 UTC

Apparently you need to look inside the front cover, if there's a barcode there it is usually the ISBN. At least, that's what FFM was doing the other weekend.

A lot of my books, though, are pre-SBN (let alone ISBN), and if anything only have a publisher's internal number. And many early books didn't have barcodes even though they do have (I)SBNs inside.