The use of barcode labels is common practice these days. Barcodes have proved to be a great method of recognition, pricing, location and classification. These widespread applications are not just for industrial usage, but for retail and consumer use too. When you buy any packaged product from the market, they most often have barcode labels attached or the barcode printed on it.
So how does the common person make use of these barcodes? We can hardly carry an industrial barcode reader with us every time we visit the grocery store. The answer lies in your pocket. It’s your mobile phone.
Smartphones
If you happen to have a smartphone, then it can help you to translate the barcode into a language which you can read and understand. For those of us who are not familiar with smartphones, it is a new generation of phone which runs applications and connects to the internet. They have their own operating system, much like your computer. You may even be familiar with a few of these smartphones. These include popular phones like Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s BlackBerry.
How does it work?
So how do smartphones read barcodes? Almost all smartphones have a camera. This camera acts as the hardware for the barcode reader. In addition to the camera, you also need to download the application for your respective smartphone. This application has the required software program to recognise the barcode label and translate the information for you.
Advantages and applications
This may come in handy when you want to check out the price and other details of any product at a store. You wouldn’t have to take a product to the counter every time you have a query. These barcode label reader applications on smartphones are also equipped to read other kinds of codes, like the QR-codes. A great benefit is that once you read the barcode label with your phone, you can save the information for future use or simply check it online if you have an active internet connection.