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Wouldnt it be nice, if my useless cellphone camera could read barcodes?
A barcode-scanner could, for example, help weight-watchers instantly scan what calories the food in the supermarkets contains. Environmentalists could scan, if a product was produced using genetically modified plants or pesticides.
It
shouldn't be too difficult to do:
1) an inexpensive, plastic lens that I snap onto my cellphone (lens helps camera focus on barcode even when barcode is two inches from lens), the snap-on-lens including a "distance-holder" that keeps the scanned product-barcode straight and in focus, so that a clear image is scanned by the camera and delivered to...
2)...a java applet in my cellphone, that decodes the image into a barcode and sends it via SMS to...
3) ...a mobile service provider that returns useful information about the product I scanned
"....Hate to point it out, Edna, but you better leave your hands off that jar of peanut butter. The crazed scientists at ACME Corp are trying to introduce a new genetically altered mutant peanut from Mars... Greetings from Greenpeace.org"
Or some such thing.
"Turn a camera-phone into a barcode scanner. Easy. Just load the code ..."
http://www.newswire...dex.cfm/article/654
Underway. [waugsqueke, Jun 30 2005]
myFoodPhone
http://www.myfoodphone.com/sprint.aspx
No barcode necessary [angel, Jan 27 2007]
[link]
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This can be done now using camera phones. No additional hardware needed. (link) |
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I was wondering why my phone does this; now I know. |
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