BarCode reader

Hi every body,

I wanna a BAR CODE reader project, "directelly by using PC".

I hope you would help me by a detailed-free project or by providing helpfull links.

I wanna this as a project for my study.

Thanks in advance

I built a barcode reader at one point using an LED and phototransistor coupled with a 6811 I think. It was the "pen" type that you sweep across the bar code. It then measures the amount of light and dark areas and uses a look up table to translate each set of bars into a particular digit which it then output from its serial port. It worked ok, but not as reliable as the professional versions (though it could read forward or backward). I dont recall what types of codes it could read, but it was not a very difficult project (a few days maybe?).

I bet now it would be even easier. At the time, my micro did not have a prescaler for the input capture, so I had to handle overflow. Now the modern breed (pics/avrs) have the ability to scale the counter so handling overflow is either easier or not even neccessary.

Would you help with the project details please???

Well there are a couple of key questions

(1) What types of codes do you want to examine?

(2) Are you going to use a microcontroller circuit to perform the conversion

I can explain my design as it applies to your situation if you can give us some idea of what your end result is expected to be.