Huh, TIL. Recognition performance is pretty modest (on Chrome/Mac at least) but it's fast and probably more than adequate for most close-up mobile device scans. It basically just wraps MacOS's Vision framework on the Mac, and ML Kit on Android.
Barcode Detection API
41–50 of 141 posts
Re: Barcode Detection API
#42>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?
Basically, yes. Browser vendors have had an agreement for some time now to only expose new APIs in secure contexts in order to encourage HTTPS adoption.
Re: Barcode Detection API
#43Even thought its on mozilla.org is not supported by Firefox according to the matrix at the bottom.
And if you look at the badges in the matrix, the API is not a standard yet, either.
Re: Barcode Detection API
#44Earlier 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.
My gym has a QR code with the Wi-Fi info
Re: Barcode Detection API
#45I'm still looking for an open source python library that can decode Data-Matrix barcodes as seen on Digikey bags. Should I give up and switch to JavaScript+browser?
Is pylibdmtx not up to it?
Re: Barcode Detection API
#46Earlier 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.
> I know at least two native cameras work, Pixel's and Samsung's since 2019
My Motorola One can do that as well and IIRC the "moto g4" I had before that too.
Re: Barcode Detection API
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Native code allows for performance gains that a script (even a performant one) may not be able to match. After all, this is fundamentally an image processing problem, one of the more computationally expensive things a browser has to do.
Isn't that the point of webassembly? Just seems like we are still moving in the wrong direction on trying to move the whole of NPM in to the browser web apis, rather than building a solid base you can build anything on.
High performance barcode decoding (e.g. scandit) uses the GPU.
After all, a modern cell phone could be producing 4k 30fps video, and high performance barcode decoders will detect linear barcodes with lines a single pixel wide, even in the presence of moderate noise/blur/overexposure (e.g. the barcode on a shiny can of coke)
Of course, I've got no idea if browsers will provide high performance barcode reading, or something simpler like zxing.
And I've got to say, it's not obvious to me why browsers would implement a barcode scanning API in preference to a more general accelerated image processing API. Plenty of other applications want to do real time video processing in the browser - such as video call background removal.
Re: Barcode Detection API
#48>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?
Basically, yes. Browser vendors have had an agreement for some time now to only expose new APIs in secure contexts in order to encourage HTTPS adoption.
I'm not sure I feel great about gating feature A behind completely unrelated feature B just because manufacturers like feature B. Even if feature B is concretely pretty good (which is debatable for https as it exists now), this seems bad on principle.
Re: Barcode Detection API
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
You’re right. I talked with the sales team and worked out a deal. They’re interested in user adoption.
Re: Barcode Detection API
#50Anyone know what the backend for this is? Is it zxing-cpp or similar?
Edit: guess it depends on the browser and OS.