Hi all. Hopefully this will be ok to post, I'll keep it short. I'm considering purchasing a portable bar code scanner. However, I in theory already have this on my phone, using digit-eyes, red laser and I forget the other one that i use. My point is, one of the reasons for the purchase would be the viewing area of the omnidirectional scanner. i find myself having a very difficult time showing the camera to the barcode on almost anything with the phone. The viewing area of a larger window does seem to help a lot. I'm not discounting the apps, clearly this is my error. Can anyone at all tell me if they would purchase a scanner even though they have the above apps, or reasons what i might do to improve my accuracy? Thanks all.
Comments
Don't know the mentioned apps but...
I have a barcode scanner app which as far as I know uses a German database for it's results. However I find the app and apps like this in general better than a standalone barcode scanner. Reason for that is pretty simple. The database most likely doesn't get out of date. But I admit the barcodes are not always easy to find. And a scanner doesn't recognize barcodes on bottles because of it's round surface.
Hope that helps you a little bit. Maybe the best way to go here would be a physical barcode scanner which pairs via bluetooth to the iPhone and get's the results that way. But then again I don't know if that would be that much easier to get the codes scanned.
My own experiences with a stand alone unit, versus digit-eyes
Hi Dennis. Thanks so much for getting back to me. I think digit-eyes is available in your language, if you wanted to get it. Anyway I have a USB conected scaned with a square large window to scan the item. Bags, aren't always easy, but bottles, say of beer, are easily enough found with the scanner. Digit-eyes I scanned some gifts I got at a friend's party. It found two, not the third, but the barcode scanner that was connected to my Mac found it faster and I think recognized one item the phone app didn't. I understand about updates, if i buy the stand alone unit, I'll have free lifetime updates, whereas I know for a fact the stand alone unit connected to the computer is less often updated and when it is, items only of say three or four are added, versus the portable option will have twice a year updates with as a friend's UK version said, 104000 new items. Yes I'm overthinking this, I know. :) like I said i'm not bashing any phone solutions, but I also accept if i want to scan with this, it's yet another device to take where the phone is just, there with me. Thanks again for your help, hope others comment.
camfind
How about using the camfind app? It's free and it gives a lot of information. Just a thought.
There's still a problem with that.
Hi Kirby. Thanks so uch for responding. again, this isn't the app I'm having problems using, it's the device I'm using. i know how to find barcodes and scan them, I'm just better using a larger viewing window then the round camera on the back of an iPhone. Does that make any more sense? As i said i oculd use any app, and probably just not do as well as with a larger windowed device. If anyone did a podcast on the digit-eyes tones that tell you a bardcode is iminent, so I would know, that means move left, right etc, then that would probably help a little.