So you want a new stereo. You can buy it over the Internet, but what happens if there is a problem? So buy it from a shop. But how do you know you are getting the right advice and more importantly paying the best price?

In a world powered by Scanbuy’s Optical Intelligence you should not have this problem. “If you are in a retail outlet you can simply scan a barcode and using your cameraphone access both technical information on a product and comparison shopping data over the Internet,” says Olivier Attia, Scanbuy’s Chief Executive Officer. “We have already proved the concept and built software that links to four comparison shopping engines.” Olivier calls the technology Scan Commerce.

Olivier identified the application of barcode technology to everyday activities back in 2000. Having worked in dotcom consulting for 12 years Olivier believes he has heard “everything from the brightest ideas to the dumbest notions but the one thing that almost all of them had in common was that they had not listened to the customer. People want easy ways to interact with the Internet and barcodes, which are a universal language, enable that.” Barcodes to Olivier provide a way of linking the on-line and off-line world to benefit from the best of both.

This resulted in the creation of Optical Intelligence, a utility which provides developers with the ability to include barcode reading functionality within their applications. The user of the application points their phone’s camera at the barcode and Optical Intelligence does the rest. Ashish Muni, Scanbuy’s Chief Technology Officer points out that “there is no need for back end processing or any communication for the barcode to be read.”

Scanbuy delivers Optical Intelligence in the form of an SDK that contains the library files for decoding various bar code standards, documentation and the full source code to demonstration applications which show exactly how to use the decoding commands. Licensing the SDK provides access to all the platform’s implementations. In addition Scanbuy also offers licensees support and updates as well as consulting for specific development if required. The SDK is licensed on a per end user basis with tiered entry points depending on the initial size of a project.

Optical Intelligence supports barcode standards for the main family of retail barcodes, which includes EAN, as used in Europe, UPC, for the US and JAN, for the Japanese market. In addition it is also able to read other standards including Code 128, Code 39, Code 39 full ASCII, RSS variations, Interleaved 2 of 5, and QR and DataMatrix which are 2 dimensional barcodes that allow for a complete data set to be encoded - not just the single string identifier that most linear barcodes store. (An interesting demonstration of this type of barcode is provided at www.scanpeople.com where it is possible to create a 2D bar code containing business card information. An application to read these bar codes on a web cam equipped PC or a cameraphone is available on request from Scanbuy.)

“We have designed Optical Intelligence to make it easy for a developer to add barcode decoding functionality to their application,” says Ashish. “They capture an image from the camera and then pass that to Scanbuy’s Optical Intelligence Library which returns the content of the barcode and information on the type of barcode decoded.”

Adding Optical Intelligence to an application involves little more than adding a one line call to the decoder and linking in the correct libraries. Libraries differ between platforms primarily to take account of the different user interfaces. The captured image of the barcode is then passed to the decoder, along with specific decoding requirements, such as limits on the type of barcode to be decoded.

Versions of Optical Intelligence are available for Symbian OS, which includes Series 60 and UIQ, Java J2ME, Win32 and Pocket PC, Palm and Brew V2.1 although the Brew version only works in the emulator at present as there are no Brew V2.1 Camera phones available (the first will be released later this year).

Ashish explains that, as with many similar developments, the original version of Optical Intelligence was written in ANSI C for the Windows desktop, and this implementation today provides barcode reading to any PC equipped with a web cam. Pocket PC followed as the next implementation before the team tackled Symbian OS.

“The hardest part of creating our Symbian OS version of Optical Intelligence was learning Symbian C++ as it differs a lot from Windows C programming,” said Ashish. “Our engineering team learnt mainly by trial and error working with the SDKs and using the developer forums. The lack of information on Symbian OS at the time we started was a challenge, but now when we bring on a new developer there are many more resources on the web and in print we can use, in addition to our own expertise. But while it had its frustrations the more our engineers work on other embedded systems the greater their appreciation of Symbian OS has become.”

Barcodes have a new technology alternative in the form of RFID, however Olivier does not see it challenging barcodes in the near future because of the almost obvious advantages barcodes have. The main one is that smartphones already have the ability to read barcodes through their camera while reading RFIDs requires additional hardware in a device. RFID tags are also more costly and would still require some visual information to accompany them to allow users to identify what and where they are.

Scanbuy claims that the Optical Intelligence SDK already has a number of customers who are actively working on projects, however none are yet launched so we are unable to bring you any details of third party commercial use. Scanbuy has created a number of applications themselves and there is a video presentation of one of these, a system for the FC (Futbol Club) Barcelona, available here on the Scanbuy web site.

Scanbuy is also in the process of launching a new developer forum and will soon be providing code samples and additional information on the SDK. There is also a sample application available at www.scanstuff.com which provides simple barcode reading capabilities for a PC equipped with a web cam.

Web: www.scanbuy.com