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Reading Barcodes
Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 9:51 pm
by kellylen
I don't know if it means anything but I decided to look up different readings of barcodes. Apparently there are like a million different kinds.
the barcode shown kind of looks like the postal barcode
it also looks like the british postal barcode as well.
Which I guess would make sense if it gives us the name of the company.
There are a lot of different kinds. its nuts. I guess this is a discussion about it. the links below are ones I found useful but don't know how to describe here.
links
http://www.taltech.com/TALtech_web/reso ... symbol.htm
http://www.wikihow.com/Read-12-Digit-UPC-Barcodes
http://www.makebarcode.com/specs/speclist.html
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Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 10:16 pm
by Samara
Here's the barcode Taylor showed us:
Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 10:26 pm
by kellylen
ok so the 2nd looks more like it... which is umm the british mail barcode
hmm? getting stuff from england? gemma?
Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 10:30 pm
by Samara
From what I've been seeing thanks to kellylen's links, I'd say this is most definitely BPO Code, British Post Office.
Example of BPO Code:
Code on Bree's medical chart:
BPO 4 State Code (British Post Office, Royal Mail Code)
BPO (British Post Office) 4 State Code is a new postal bar code symbology that has been developed by the British Post office for encoding European postcode data similar to the way the U.S. PostNET symbology is used for encoding Zip Code data. At the time of this writing, the BPO 4 State Code has not been officially adopted as the standard for European postal applications however it is anticipated that it will be sanctioned sometime in 1995. The goal of BPO 4 State Code is to provide European countries with a simple and efficient postal bar coding scheme.
The U.S. PostNET symbology encodes numeric characters in a pattern of four bars per character with each bar being either tall or short (i.e. two possible "states" for each bar). The U.S. technique thus allows for up to 16 different possible bar patterns for each set of four bars and is adequate for encoding the ten digits zero through nine. Because European postcodes contain both alpha and numeric characters, (thus requiring a minimum of 36 different possible patterns for the characters A-Z and 0 to 9), each character in the BPO 4 State Code is encoded into four bars with each bar having four possible "states". The four states are: tall bars, short bars, medium height bars extended up from the middle of the symbol and medium height bars extended down from the middle of the symbol. In theory, the BPO 4 State Code is capable of encoding up to 128 different characters however only the characters A through Z and 0 to 9 have been assigned unique bar patterns.
BPO 4 State Code is a fixed dimension symbology meaning that the height, width and spacing of all bars must fit within exact tolerances.
Now, all we have to do is figure out how to read the states within the code.
Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 10:31 pm
by Samara
kellylen wrote:ok so the 2nd looks more like it... which is umm the british mail barcode
hmm? getting stuff from england? gemma?
That, or they just needed a code that was alphanumberic rather than just numeric.
Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 10:31 pm
by kellylen
maybe the address taylor gave us and then we can compare it?
Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 10:36 pm
by Samara
Okay, there are 44 "hash marks" in Bree's code.
I'm looking around. I wonder if so many people are kind of upset with this video that they don't want to help. Where are all the brainiacs?
Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 10:42 pm
by staticmorning
what exactly are we trying to figure out here..?
Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 10:45 pm
by Samara
Here's an article that describes the code... I'm a little lost reading it, though:
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/56023 ... ption.html
what exactly are we trying to figure out here..?
We're trying to read the barcode. Personally? I don't entirely trust Taylor.
Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 10:57 pm
by Samara
Hmmm....
http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewri ... arcode.jpg
It could also be KIX (Netherlands) or OneCode (the US code that will be in effect come 2009), possiby even AusPost.
Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 10:58 pm
by Samara
Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 11:04 pm
by staticmorning
there arent enough bars to decode it..
but nice try!
Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 11:09 pm
by Samara
Okay, the US decoder requires a string of 65 characters to work...and we've only got 44 here it seems.
grrrrr.
Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 11:17 pm
by Samara
Well, I was able to recreate part of the code using the decoder, I simply used trackers for the last/unknown symbols:
BTW...the code that we see:
TFTFTDFAATDFFDTAFDATTTFFADDAFDATFDTADFATFDAT
Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 11:56 pm
by Nieriel.Manwathiel
wait wait what?? what about US codes changing in '09???
