An Application Program That Interprets Code39 Barcode Images on an iPhone

There has been a lot of interest in Smartphone technology over the last few years.Many of these phones are capable of email, internet access, and have a built in camera.Perhaps no Smartphone has generated as much interest as the iPhone.One of the features of the iPhone is that it can be programmed in Objective C using Xcode (the standard programming interface for a MAC).This paper describes an application of an iPhone that faculty and senior design students in the TAC/ABET accredited B.S. Electromechanical Engineering Technology at Miami University are working on.An iPhone application was written in Objective C that allows the user to take a picture of a bar code displayed on a computer screen using the built in iPhone camera.The software processes the image and determines the corresponding code39 characters.Students are currently working on transmitting the barcode data to a remote data terminal.This system would have many uses for applications that require remote data acquisition, time/date stamping, and lab work verification.An example would be collecting inventory information from products that are separated by large distances from a data collection device.