When building Android applications that require barcode scanning capabilities, developers have several SDK options to consider. Two commonly used solutions are Google ML Kit Barcode Scanning and Dynamsoft Barcode Reader. ML Kit is a free, general-purpose machine learning SDK from Google, while Dynamsoft Barcode Reader is a commercial SDK specialized...

Augmented reality (AR) enhances our physical environment by overlaying digital information in real time. This technology transforms traditional barcode scanning from a simple data capture task into an intuitive spatial experience. Imagine walking through a warehouse where AR markers precisely identify each item’s location, or managing hospital supplies with visual...

When evaluating barcode scanning SDKs, you’ll often encounter bold marketing claims: “Scans barcodes from 5 meters away!” or “Industry-leading long-distance scanning!” But here’s the truth that vendors don’t want you to know: distance alone is a meaningless metric. In this article, I’ll show you how to build an iOS app...

Dynamsoft Barcode Scanner API is open source and free to customize. It currently provides two modes: Single and Multiple. In Single mode, the barcode scanner freezes the camera preview and waits for the user to select a barcode if multiple barcodes are detected. In Multiple mode, the scanner instantly returns...

Using a phone to scan and print (copy) documents is ideal for convenience, portability, and quick tasks, making it a versatile and practical choice for many users. In this article, we are going to build a web app to scan and print a document on a mobile phone. The following...

In this article, we will explore Dynamsoft’s Ready-to-Use Barcode Scanner API for iOS. We will cover how to integrate the barcode scanner framework, distributed via the Swift Package Manager, into an iOS SwiftUI project, as well as how to customize its functionalities by modifying the source code. This article is...

In the previous article, we talked about how to scan barcodes using a USB camera on an Android device. In this article, we are going to scan MRZ (machine-readable zone) on passports and ID cards with Dynamsoft Label Recognizer. Here is a video of the result: New Project Open Android...

Dynamsoft has released a Ready-to-Use Barcode Scanner API for Android developers, enabling them to quickly integrate barcode scanning functionality into their apps. This component is open-source and free to customize. In this tutorial, we will walk you through the barcode scanner API and demonstrate how to integrate it into Android...

While Flutter supports six plaforms — Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, iOS and web — the official Flutter camera plugin is limited to just three: Android, iOS, and web. The development pace for the official plugin has been sluggish, with no clear roadmap for desktop support. As a result, creating a...

In the previous article, we demonstrated how to build a Python camera SDK based on the litecam C++ SDK. In this article, we will integrate the C++ camera library into a Node.js addon, enabling developers to capture webcam frames and perform further image processing using server-side JavaScript. This article is...

Now that the lightweight C++ camera SDK is complete for Windows, Linux and macOS, we can integrate it into other high-level programming languages. In this article, we will explore how to build a Python camera SDK based on the C++ camera library and use it for multi-barcode scanning with the...

This is the final article in a series on building a lightweight C++ camera library across multiple platforms. We’ve already covered Windows and Linux, and now it’s time to dive into macOS. In this article, we’ll tap into AVFoundation to handle camera capture under the hood and leverage Cocoa for...

In the previous article, we developed a LiteCam library for camera access on Linux. To extend its functionality to Windows, we will leverage the Media Foundation API. This article explores how to use Media Foundation to access the camera on Windows, integrate it with the LiteCam library, and reuse the...

When searching for a camera SDK to develop desktop camera applications on Linux, OpenCV often comes to mind due to its simple APIs for camera access. However, the size of the OpenCV library is big, making it redundant for smaller projects, especially those that only require basic camera functionality. To...

An identity document or ID card is any document that may be used to prove a person’s identity. There are various forms of identity documents: driver’s license, passport and formal identity card. Barcodes and MRZ (machine-readable zones) are often printed on an ID card so that its info can be...

Using the getUserMedia API, we can open cameras on the web with JavaScript. It is supported on most browsers and Chrome for Android has additional support for controlling the camera’s zoom, torch, focus, and so on, giving more possibilities for making a camera web app. In this article, we are...

An IP camera, also known as a network camera, is a digital video tool that sends and receives data via the internet. Unlike its analogue predecessor, the CCTV (Closed Circuit TV), it offers the functionality to view live or recorded footage from anywhere, anytime using a web-based platform or mobile...

Exchangeable image file format (officially Exif) is a standard that specifies formats for images, sound, and ancillary tags used by digital cameras (including smartphones). It contains metadata like camera parameters, image dimensions, and image orientation. Most camera sensors have a shape where its width is larger than the height. If...

In the previous article, we’ve talked about how to control camera zoom on the web. In this article, we are going to add the feature to automatically zoom in to scan a tiny or distant QR code to a web QR code scanner. Dynamsoft Barcode Reader is used to read...

Using the getUserMedia API, we can open cameras on the web with JavaScript. Starting from Chrome 87, it is also possible to control the camera’s pan, tilt, and zoom, giving more possibilities for making a camera web app. In this article, we are going to talk about how to control...

An identity document or ID card is any document that may be used to prove a person’s identity. There are various forms of identity documents: driver’s license, passport and formal identity card. Barcodes and MRZ (machine-readable zones) are often printed on an ID card so that its info can be...

As the web platform develops, we can build rich kinds of applications on it. We can build a web app like a barcode scanner or a document scanner using the getUserMedia API to get camera frames for live analysis. While a barcode scanner may not require high resolution, a document...

In our previous article, we mentioned how to create a Web Barcode Scanner using RazorBarcodeLibrary. The library is built on top of the Dynamsoft JavaScript Barcode SDK, which encapsulates the camera access and barcode reading logic in JavaScript. In fact, Dynamsoft also provides an independent JavaScript camera library, named Dynamsoft...

WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) is a free and open-source project providing web browsers and mobile applications with real-time communication (RTC) via application programming interfaces (APIs). It provides an API named getUserMedia to access the device’s cameras and microphones. Sometimes, we may need to record a video to save the content...

Jetpack Compose is Android’s recommended modern toolkit for building native UI. It simplifies and accelerates UI development on Android. In this article, we are going to build a document scanner in Jetpack Compose. It can acquire images from document scanners or cameras and run document detection and correction. Here are...

NativeScript is an open-source native runtime for building native mobile apps with JavaScript. We can easily call native APIs using JavaScript. A NativeScript plugin is any npm package that exposes a native API via JavaScript which is made convenient for projects to use. In this article, we are going to...

The MediaStream ImageCapture API is an API for capturing images or videos from a photographic device. We can use it to enable the capabilities of the native device like turning on the torch and taking a high-resolution photo. It is supported on Chrome Android. You can check the compatibility here....

Dynamsoft Document Normalizer is an SDK to detect the boundary of documents and runs perspective transformation to get a normalized document image. In this article, we are going to build an iOS document scanner using Dynamsoft Document Normalizer and AVFoundation. A demo video of the final result: The scanning process:...

Dynamsoft Document Normalizer is an SDK to detect the boundary of documents and runs perspective transformation to get a normalized document image. A normalized image can be used for further processing such as OCR. In this article, we are going to create an Android document scanner using Dynamsoft Document Normalizer...

In the previous series of articles, we’ve created a react-native-vision-camera frame processor plugin of Dynamsoft Label Recognizer to recognize text. In this article, we are going to build an MRZ scanner using this plugin to better illustrate how to use it. MRZ stands for machine-readable zone, which is usually at...

With the getUserMedia API, we can access the camera in web browsers, which makes it possible to do computer vision tasks like barcode scanning. In this article, we are going to build a camera component for React with hooks. Build a React Camera Component with Hooks We are going to...

Web Components are a set of features that provide a standard component model for the Web allowing for encapsulation and interoperability of individual HTML elements. 1 We can define a custom element to use in any HTML environment, with any framework, or with no framework at all. Stencil is a...

The MediaDevices.getUserMedia() API is the standard way to access cameras from web browsers. While it’s relatively straightforward, building a complete web camera viewer still requires significant effort. Until recently, there were no ready-to-use JavaScript camera widgets. However, with the release of the Dynamsoft Camera Enhancer library, implementing a browser-based camera...

Although almost every Android phone is equipped with cameras, some Android devices, like TV boxes and kiosks, may not have cameras built-in. An easy way to add extra camera functionality to these devices is by connecting with a USB camera if they support USB-OTG. Starting from Android 9, the Android...

If you search for passport scanner software or MRZ reader software, you will find many of them are only available for mobile devices. For police officers, scanning passports by mobile devices is convenient when they are patrolling. However, for customs and immigration officers, they usually use desktop system and professional...

Motion detection can detect whether there is a change in the positions of objects. It can be achieved by many methods. For example, infrared light or laser technology can be used for optical detection. As for image processing methods, there is a basic one by a fixed camera, which compares...

Dynamsoft Camera Enhancer (DCE) provides high-level APIs for developers to quickly create a camera application, such as a barcode scanner and a text scanner. The API surface works across most Android and iOS devices. While it leverages the capabilities of Android’s Camera2 and iOS’s AVCaptureSession, it is much easier to...

Cameras are now ubiquitous in our life. Every mobile phone has built-in cameras which can shoot nice photos. As for document scanning, there is document camera (also called overhead scanner) which is adjustable and has high resolution. Image source: https://www.amazon.com/Conferencing-Recording-Classroom-Real-time-Definition/dp/B08V4WLPX1/ A document camera has the following benefits: Users don’t have...

Let’s continue discussing scanning QR codes at a distance. In this article, we’ll talk about resolution. Using the camera’s highest resolution Most of the current smartphones’ video stream resolution can be set to 1080P (Full HD) and many of them support 4K (Ultra HD) video capturing. The higher the resolution...

Have you had such an experience that you need to scan a QR code displayed on a screen in the front of a meeting room, but you sat in the back? You opened the barcode scanning app and aimed it at the code, but it just couldn’t read the code....

Camera control and barcode reading are two essential parts of a barcode scanner. Dynamsoft Barcode Reader is an advanced barcode reader with an easy-to-use Android library. The implementation of the barcode reading function is simple and straightforward. Making a good camera app, however, is not easy. In Android, there are...

Dynamic Web TWAIN has added some exciting features related to the mobile platform since its version 16. Document capturing via mobile cameras, 16.0 PDF Rasterizer mobile edition, 16.0 LoadImageEx supports mobile platform, 16.1 Acquiring images from a remote scanner, 16.1 The scanDocument API which makes it easy to call a...

I’ve collected some learning resources of multi-camera programming for iOS and Android. Because of the hardware limitation, I have not tested the samples provided by Apple and Google. Multi-Camera for iOS OS Version v13+ Devices iPhone XS, XS Max, XR and iPad Pro. AVFoundation API Virtual camera ToF Camera N/A...

Developing Android camera apps can be more complex compared to iOS due to varying hardware specifications and vendor implementations. Since API level 21, the older Camera API has been deprecated in favor of the more powerful and flexible Camera2 API. In this post, we’ll explore how to create Android camera...

Dynamsoft Android Camera SDK is coming soon. In this article, let’s preview the SDK and learn how to write an Android document scanning app with a few lines of Kotlin code. Features Automatic border detection Trimming and perspective correction Image enhancement iOS image processing Offline I/O and PDF Customizable UI...

A few weeks ago, Dynamsoft released an iOS camera SDK that aims to help developers quickly build a document scanning app for iOS platform. In this post, I will share how to configure the SDK in Xcode, as well as how to create a simple document scanner app from scratch....

For the past week, I was looking for a live streaming solution to broadcast video from a USB webcam that connects to Raspberry Pi. This post will help you set up a live streaming server on Raspberry Pi step by step. Installing FFmpeg on Raspberry Pi My first try was to...

If you have a USB camera, how can you build a simple C# camera application on Windows 10? There are three options:  WIA (Windows Imaging Acquisition), DirectShow and MediaCapture. After trying some sample code that downloaded from CodeProject and GitHub, I got the conclusion: 1. WIA is not good because...

When you are going to purchase a new smartphone like iPhone 6 or Galaxy S5, don’t just throw your old devices away. Via socket connection, we can build a remote monitoring system with obsolete mobile devices instead of purchasing expensive Webcams or wireless cameras. In this article, I’d like to...

In this tutorial, I want to make a more complicated WebSocket demo, which enables me to capture images from scanners on server side, and view the images in desktop web browsers or mobile web browsers. Here is the flowchart:   Prerequisites Read Image Transmission between a HTML5 WebSocket Server and...

In my daily life, I enjoy taking photos with my smartphone and uploading them to various websites. So I started thinking, “Is it possible to implement these functions in a web browser?” Fortunately, the new HTML5 SDK is capable of uploading local images or captured images to web servers. Everything...

Barcode scanning, especially QR code scans, are now widely used in various applications. This includes advertisements, newspapers, social networks, signage, and so on. The growth of QR codes is in large part due to the smartphone market’s booming growth. As a result, scanning technology tends to be more and more useful...

Control web cameras or the built-in laptop webcams inside IE, Firefox and Chrome with JavaScript In some scenarios, such as Visitor Monitoring module for a government department or Patient Tracking module for a hospital, we may need to take a snap of human faces, patient charts, user IDs and so...