Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Barcode Detection API

developer.mozilla.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 141 posts

Re: Barcode Detection API

#31

Post by filoleg »

eertami wrote: post #22
PaulHoule wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point in time it's a pain point for me that Android devices don't usually have built-in QR reader software. I can tell iOS users to just "scan the code with the Camera" app but I have to tell Android users to find a QR scanner app on the app store. My experience with an actual bottom-of-the-line prepaid phone was that the first QR scanner app I downloaded from Google Play worked right the first time but I had…

Honest question: for what reasons do you ever need to scan a random QR code? I think I've used them to sign in to some apps (eg, WhatsApp) while logged in on a PC, and other than that exactly 0 times. The Google camera app does support QR codes FWIW, but I don't know if any other vendors except Google use it.

> Honest question: for what reasons do you ever need to scan a random QR code?

In the past two years, due to COVID, a lot of restaurants and dining establishments got rid of paper menus and left people with "here is a QR code, scan it to see the menu". This is the most common situation I've encountered this in. It wasn't just a few restaurants that did this, it was heavy majority of places here (Seattle).

Re: Barcode Detection API

#32

Post by isatty »

eertami wrote: post #22
PaulHoule wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point in time it's a pain point for me that Android devices don't usually have built-in QR reader software. I can tell iOS users to just "scan the code with the Camera" app but I have to tell Android users to find a QR scanner app on the app store. My experience with an actual bottom-of-the-line prepaid phone was that the first QR scanner app I downloaded from Google Play worked right the first time but I had…

Honest question: for what reasons do you ever need to scan a random QR code? I think I've used them to sign in to some apps (eg, WhatsApp) while logged in on a PC, and other than that exactly 0 times. The Google camera app does support QR codes FWIW, but I don't know if any other vendors except Google use it.

Lots of restaurants and bars switched to QR codes for their menus and that alone is a good enough reason to have native scanning.

Re: Barcode Detection API

#33

Post by dplavery92 »

eertami wrote: post #22
PaulHoule wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point in time it's a pain point for me that Android devices don't usually have built-in QR reader software. I can tell iOS users to just "scan the code with the Camera" app but I have to tell Android users to find a QR scanner app on the app store. My experience with an actual bottom-of-the-line prepaid phone was that the first QR scanner app I downloaded from Google Play worked right the first time but I had…

Honest question: for what reasons do you ever need to scan a random QR code? I think I've used them to sign in to some apps (eg, WhatsApp) while logged in on a PC, and other than that exactly 0 times. The Google camera app does support QR codes FWIW, but I don't know if any other vendors except Google use it.

They became very popular during the pandemic for restaurants to offer their menu as a scannable QR code instead of distributing and sanitizing hand-held paper menus. I think this is becoming less relevant now.

They're popular for street-level advertisements for (concerts, events, clubs, jobs) to provide a link to more information without the consumer having to type a url into the browser. This is more important if you don't want to pay for a pithy high-level domain as a landing page for the thing you are advertising.

I have also seen them for easily entering WiFi credentials to your device on a new network.

They can be used in museums to link to self-guided tour information on the artwork/exhibits you are looking at. This used to be done more with rentable/loanable walkman+headset kind of devices, but makes more sense to do on one's own mobile device now.

Re: Barcode Detection API

#34

Post by egfx »

jacob019 wrote: post #15

I recently made a webapp for scanning barcodes using the phone camera for warehouse use. I used QuaggaJS. I disabled the barcode locator because it was too heavy, instead I just draw a box on the screen that the barcode is to be positioned in. The barcode detection and decoding happens entirely in the browser and it works very well.

I also built a web app for barcode scanning. For testing quaggaJS is fine but it’s highly inconsistent and requires an extreme degree of customization to get adequate results. I recommend scandit. It’s a good production ready library with a very nice web sdk.

Re: Barcode Detection API

#35

Post by RenThraysk »

PaulHoule wrote: post #9
miohtama wrote: post #2

As the page does not discuss the motivation behind the API, does anyone know why this is ”native” API and not just a generic image processing script implemented with JavaScript / WebGL / etc.?

At this point in time it's a pain point for me that Android devices don't usually have built-in QR reader software. I can tell iOS users to just "scan the code with the Camera" app but I have to tell Android users to find a QR scanner app on the app store. My experience with an actual bottom-of-the-line prepaid phone was that the first QR scanner app I downloaded from Google Play worked right the first time but I had…

It's built into Google Lens. Use it occasionally to send files over wifi to phone, with webwormhole.

Re: Barcode Detection API

#37

Post by silviogutierrez »

egfx wrote: post #34
jacob019 wrote: post #15

I recently made a webapp for scanning barcodes using the phone camera for warehouse use. I used QuaggaJS. I disabled the barcode locator because it was too heavy, instead I just draw a box on the screen that the barcode is to be positioned in. The barcode detection and decoding happens entirely in the browser and it works very well.

I also built a web app for barcode scanning. For testing quaggaJS is fine but it’s highly inconsistent and requires an extreme degree of customization to get adequate results. I recommend scandit. It’s a good production ready library with a very nice web sdk.

Not OP, but I looked into scandit. While excellent, it's quite expensive right?

Re: Barcode Detection API

#38

Post by bob1029 »

djbusby wrote: post #36

There is a full copy of the zxing library in JS. It's been working great for my purposes - scanning QR and C128 Barcodes. E: https://github.com/zxing-js/library

This is what we use as a fallback if the user doesnt have a handheld 2D scanner. Very fast & accurate in most of my testing.

Re: Barcode Detection API

#39

Post by calmoo »

Bilal_io wrote: post #20
PaulHoule wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point in time it's a pain point for me that Android devices don't usually have built-in QR reader software. I can tell iOS users to just "scan the code with the Camera" app but I have to tell Android users to find a QR scanner app on the app store. My experience with an actual bottom-of-the-line prepaid phone was that the first QR scanner app I downloaded from Google Play worked right the first time but I had…

I've been scanning QR codes with my Android phone for a long time. I know at least two native cameras work, Pixel's and Samsung's since 2019. But I am sure legacy phones with older android versions don't support it natively.

My Huawei P20 doesn't have QR scanning native to the camera app.

Re: Barcode Detection API

#40

Post by gruez »

>Secure context: This feature is available only in secure contexts (HTTPS), in some or all supporting browsers.

What's the point of this? I understand why you might want this for APIs that expose private user information, but this just performs some computation. You could do the same thing with a js library or webassembly. Is this just to punish http sites?

Post reply on HN