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Comment by dazzawazza | Hacker News Reader

Interesting that it uses the zxing library [1] which doesn't support EAN/UPC yet (on iPhone) and they have written EAN/UPC scanning and haven't been kind enough to donate the code back to zxing. I guess that would remove their developer license revenue stream [2].

I assume they use Amazon to get EAN->item mapping which is against the amazon TOS. If they don't I love to know what they do use.

[1] - http://code.google.com/p/zxing/

[2] - http://redlaser.com/SDK.aspx

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Actually ZXing is a very very small part of RedLaser. We are thinking about kicking back our C++ port to the community!

I thought the iPhone didn't support those kind of barcodes due to physics based limitations of the camera/lens.

If they're doing something really clever to read these barcodes it makes some sense to not just give it away. The Apache licence does give them that option.

All iPhones have good enough optics to detect 2D barcodes like QR Code. Linear barcodes like UPC were trickier until the iPhone 3GS, which has variable focus camera hardware that also admits direct access to camera frames. On the 3GS, barcode scanning is a cake walk.

There are many surprising things about RedLaser's success, but technology isn't one of them. I agree with OP that apparent violations of licensing (access to Amazon.com via mobile is not allowed) are surprising. Most surprising to me is how well RedLaser has sold given that barcode scanning was antiquated over a year ago by products like SnapTell. Why scan a UPC code when you can just take a picture of the cover of a book and have the product found just as fast, with as good or better accuracy? No matter if your photo is blurry, or badly lit, or out of focus, or only grabs a part of the book's cover...

I'm surprised it's selling at all. Aren't there any decent free barcode apps for the iPhone?

The picture on the redlaser homepage shows someone scanning a packet of Quaker Oats. Does SnapTell handle food/drink/other supermarket goods?

Why scan a UPC code when you can just take a picture of the cover of a book and have the product found just as fast

Surely the error rate of that compared to bar codes is much higher. For common products Im sure it works just as well but bar code scanning doesn't degrade for edge cases in the same way.

You should try it. It is remarkably great, and while I can't speak to error rates I believe that it is on par or better than a good camera-based scanner. Also: using SnapTell with my decades-old textbooks in Greek religion confirms it's not just for "common" products.

(Disclosure: I have nothing whatsoever to do with SnapTell, but I have been consistently impressed with the technology.)

Where did you confirm that these guys use amazon for their product look up? I've been wondering what they use to look up the products and get images, etc.

As they state on http://www.redlaser.com/SDK.aspx :

"WARNING: 10/14/2009 The RedLaser SDK currently uses an unpublished function to access video frames. Very recently, others have indicated that this will likely lead to rejection of any application using this function, including any application with the RedLaser SDK. We are working hard to find a solution, as we believe there is great potential for this technology on the iPhone. Please take this into account when considering use of the RedLaser SDK."

So they probably analyze a lot of different video frames before finding an accurate one.

So they probably analyze a lot of different video frames before finding an accurate one.

The main camera app does this too.

And then there's that hack where you get two similar frames and interpolate and generate a higher resolution image.

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