New features at the GuruLib community

GuruLib community was expanded to add the clouds, search and tools section. Clouds give a daily snapshot of popular genres, authors, actors, artist, directors etc. on GuruLib. The search tab allows you to search members, title, genre, author etc. The tools section will list utilities that are useful for your home library.

Spring break is fast approaching that means we will be off. Hope you all are enjoying a the nice weather.

Webcam Barcode Reader for Sale

We have been using the trial version of Adobe Flash CS3 and would like to purchase a copy of this wonderful software. Adobe Flash will help us provide more value added services to GuruLib similar to webcam barcode reader. To raise enough money,  we have decided to sell webcam barcode reader flash component. The barcode reader flash component is priced at $60. You may use it for any commercial purpose and we would be glad to provide you with any help needed to make this flash component run on your website. We have to sell at least 12 copies to raise enough money to buy the Adobe Flash. If you are interested send us an email at ranabasheer@hotmail.com. We will issue a PayPal invoice and once we receive the payment we will send you the flash component along with relevant documents and a sample webpage. Try our barcode sample available online.    

UPDATE: The generous people at  bought the Barcode reader software which helped us raise enough money to purchase the Adobe Flash CS3. We promise to bring more flash based features in future. Since our objectives were met, we are no longer selling the Webcam Barcode Reader Flash component.

A flash based webcam barcode reader

Finally, I completed a webcam based barcode reader that is written in flash. The earlier method of uploading the pictures resulted in lot of failed reading. Naturally nobody really used that feature. Meanwhile, I was searching for a technology that will allow webcam capture from a browser. Adobe Flash seemed to be the ideal choice. So after couple of days of learning to program in flash, I ported my barcode decoding code to flash. I am still testing this new feature and would like to have some feedback on the effectiveness of this new barcode reader . A 1 minute video instruction of how to use webcam as a barcode scanner

You can find the demo flash webcam barcode reader here .

webcam are not designed to work as barcode readers, so this flash component won’t work as fast as the barcode readers in walmart. You need to bring the barcode very near to the webcam and should have a steady hand. The barcode picture below will give you an approximate idea how close you need to bring the barcode to the webcam. The flash code need a good barcode picture with white bars and black bars clearly visible. If your hands are shaky, the webcam blurs the image. Let me know your experience and I will try to improve it.

UPDATE: Cheap webcams don’t have enough resolution to work as barcode scanners. I use Philips SPC325NC Webcam. I bought this webcam for around $35 from Walmart. Also make sure that your webcam’s manual focus control is set such that it gives a good focus at approx. 2 – 3 inches from the webcam. Additionally, having a good lighting in the room should help.