Using Smartphones for Barcode Scanning?

We just tried that in a test environment.  It was what we expected, the red-laser type scanners just got a blank signal from bouncing off the glass of the iPhone surface. 

I think the only way to scan these devices will be with some kind of passive scanner.

When we launched our online ticketing system last year here at the Science Museum of Minnesota, a couple of us in marketing testing a PDF barcode with an iPhone and it worked! We were excited about that. So we have experience that it does work. We use N-Scan scanners.

Eric Mueller
Electronic Marketing Coordinator / Web Designer
Science Museum of Minnesota

When we launched our online ticketing system last year here at the Science Museum of Minnesota, a couple of us in marketing testing a PDF barcode with an iPhone and it worked! We were excited about that. So we have experience that it does work. We use N-Scan scanners.

Eric Mueller
Electronic Marketing Coordinator / Web Designer
Science Museum of Minnesota

We just tried that in a test environment.  It was what we expected, the red-laser type scanners just got a blank signal from bouncing off the glass of the iPhone surface. 

I think the only way to scan these devices will be with some kind of passive scanner.

This message was sent automatically to you by www.tessituranetwork.com because you subscribed to the Tessitura Technical Forum. You may reply to this message to post to the Technical forum or visit the site to search, read and post to the forums.

Hi :)

Have a look at this part of the Network: http://www.tessituranetwork.com/network/Products/Network%20Products%20Services/N-Scan.aspx

N-Scan is a product allowing Access control using ticket, print-out and smartphone scanning. I gather that the 3-d scanners (the ones that spin around like a shop-till scanner) have no trouble reading barcodes on LED and OLED devices like smartphones / smart-cams, etc.

There is a very recent webinar on N-Scan which showcases the features of the system and its integration with Tessitura very well, you'll find it here: http://www.tessituranetwork.com/network/Learning/Webinars/Webinars%20Archive/General/Intro%20to%20N-Scan.aspx

Hope this helps :)

There are some companies that provide a service to deliver barcodes from various sources to mobile devices.  Mobiqa is one that comes to mind.  The tricky part of this is being able to capture and feed them all the information they require to actually deliver to a wide range of potential devices.  It is an evolving market so will likely get more robust over the coming years.

As for being able to read barcodes from mobile devices, it works as long as you are using a scanner with a 2D reader.  The traditional 1D scanners (the single red line) won't generally work.  This is one of a few reasons to opt for these newer types of scanners when looking at access control.

One practial note to this:

I will bet you all, "donuts to dollars", that scanning portable electronic devices will greatly increase the time and difficulty of patron entry.

Think about it, the patron has to activate the device, navigate to the email where the ticket is stored, open the pdf, then present the device to the usher.  Even IF everything goes just right, you've added 30 seconds to an entry.  However there's an almost infinite number of things that can go wrong.  All this when you're trying to get 3,000 people through the doors?

I predict that we'll all be using paper for quite some time.

Not related to Tessitura but for your research, I think Major League Baseball is are offering the ability to send 2D barcodes to phone for scanning at the gate. Ron can speak more to this but in the webinar on N-Scan they mentioned this in the future for N-Scan as well.

Good luck