Linear Barcodes

Barcode scanners are fun, got my hand on one of these to catalog my book collection on librarything.com. Its easier to create the collection by scanning off the ISBNs off of books.

The one I use is iBall CS-153 Linear Barcode Scanner

Here is a random list of barcodes I scanned off of various products around my bedroom.

LUSDJ0D165050038A11601 

4718235227159

8904149401006

8903539010200

8901124715332

9788184890266

9781408809594

9780595142361

9780007428052

9780743440295

9722121221225

LXPG40C0269290B9161601 

92904738216

SA00000183A

4902430281232

355067048902647

HT13XTJ26185

99HMN005-00

4710937348842

205000001519991

W1255ZCZC00072R

884912116505

8901499006653

037000230151

8901491503051

8901491104555

8902080504060

8902570801860

8901138714550

8901424008332

8901396465003

8901030207068

8901023005800

8901396144007

8901396112136

8902570801471

4902430354332

8901396151258

8901571001248

8901012155035

8901393004700

89000816

8901207900839

8901233008011

8901063004023

8901063035034

8901876001035

SLF02A067030004802

8901207503559

8901207503221

6589726583256

884898315176

4800888142238

8901296102121

8901180118023

8901860010517

4711734822603

6932008080019

8906016571058

074470584933

Bar codes can be used to encodes lots of different kinds of data, Universal Product Codes being one of them. http://www.upcdatabase.com is a good source to figure out what each Universal Product Code Stands for:

For example:

9781408809594

This is a Bookland ISBN code, which means it's an ISBN number encoded as an EAN/UCC-13. You can tell this by the first three digits of the EAN/UCC-13 (978). The numbers after that are the ISBN. You'll notice the last digits differ, though -- EAN/UCC-13 and ISBN calculate their check digits differently (in fact, the check 'digit' on an ISBN can be a digit or the letter X).

Here are the innards of iBall CS-153:

The microcontroller is AT91SAM7S64

It seems to be a camera based bar code reader.

Here is the iball Linear Barcode Scanner User Manual and Configuration Leaflet. This barcode scanner does not have any buttons on it and neither is it supplied with any application/device driver software. The bar code scanner emulates a standard USB HID Keyboard. All data read from a bar code is sent to the computer as key presses. The user manual has various bar codes printed in it. To change the settings of the barcode scanner, one has to scan the bar code associated with that configuration change and voila! the new setting will take effect immediately (of course you have to scan bar codes for "start configuration" and "stop configuration" too and you may need to power cycle the device too)

Barcode Scanner from ZXing Team is a nice Android app which uses your cell phone's camera to read barcodes off of products and then fetches their description and price from the internet and displays the data on the screen.