Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by schappim 1567 days ago
What device are you using to scan? If you can use Android, Chrome supports pdf417.
1 comments

I wonder how good the Chrome/Android PDF417 reader is? Is it just ZXing, or something else under the hood? For PDF417, ZXing is only OK. Unfortunately PDF417 is a pretty crappy format to decode with a sensor/camera compared to DataMatrix and QR which have much easier alignment targets and are designed for the sensor/frame based use case (instead of a 2D scanning laser). I wouldn't expect great performance out of BarcodeScanner / Android Chrome if it's just using Zebra Crossing under the hood.
Chrome is likely using ML Kit on Android under the hood on Android. [1]

Well if you try the demo I just made [2] you can find out. Works pretty well in Chrome Version 99.0.4844.51 (Official Build) (arm64) and on my Pixel 2. Naturally won't work on my iPhone because #SafariIsTheNewIE

[1] https://developers.google.com/ml-kit/vision/barcode-scanning...

[2] https://files.littlebird.com.au/barcode20.html