ZXing on Android PDF417

Question

Was anybody able to read the PDF417 barcode with use of the ZXing library on the Android OS? They are supporting this - and according to their page it is in 'alpha' stage.

We are not looking for perfect solution - since the PDF417 is pretty complex and needs a very good camera with auto-focus, we can accept that it will be working only on few pre-selected high end devices.

We have tried also the Barcode Scanner + available on the Android Market - it has the PDF417 option in the settings, but whatever we read it always fails.

We were looking also for commercial SDK, also here on stackoverflow, but with no luck.

Any help is appreciated.

Kind Regards, STeN

Answer 1

It really depends on what you expect. Simple PDF417 reads pretty instantly, like... this or this.

This will never be scanned.

Borderline is stuff that is small or moderately complex: example 1 and example 2.

I can read the first but not the second, even though the first is denser -- size helps.

• Make sure to enable PDF 417 decoding; it's off by default
• Quiet zone (white space around the code) is required
• Focus and light help a lot

Answer 2

You can try PDF417.mobi SDK. It should work on low-end phones if equipped with auto-focus camera. It's a commercial library, but free for developers and non-commercial purposes.

You can try the demo here or play with code directly from GitHub. Official web site is here http://pdf417.mobi/

Disclaimer: I'm part of the team working on PDF417.mobi