"Scanning" with an iPhone Camera
 

There is an inexpensive way to use your iPhone's camera to "scan" and lookup book and other merchandise bar codes with ScoutPal Live.  We would like to thank ScoutPal subscriber Roy Jackson at The Book Broker for providing us with these instructions.

Of course, the first thing you will need to do is you will need to subscribe to Scoutpal, if you haven't done so already.  (You can start with the Free Trial.)  Then browse to ie.scoutpal.com on your phone and use it to do a few ScoutPal lookups by "punching in" the ISBN/UPC using the phone's touchscreen keypad.

To "scan in" bar codes using the iPhone's camera, go to the iPhone's app store and download a bar code reader app called RedLaser by Occipital. The app is $1.99. (If you have an older iPhone, you should refer to RedLaser's site at http://redlaser.com/ for information regarding earlier iPhone compatibility.)

Keep in mind that any camera-based "scanner" app is not really a true laser bar code scanner. Instead, it literally takes a photograph of the bar code, so the process will be like taking any other sort of snapshot: there must be good lighting, no shadows, and you will need to hold steady and get the subject into focus. It will take some practice to learn how to use the app.

After installing the RedLaser app on the iPhone, follow these configuration steps:

1. On your iPhone (or your computer) browse to  http://www.scoutpal.com
2. Login to scoutpal.com and click on "Additional Service Addresses". Copy the "direct-lookup URL" that you will see displayed at the bottom.
3. Next, you will configure your Redlaser app to work with the Scoutpal direct-lookup URL on the iPhone.  Using the Safari browser on the iPhone, browse to: http://www.redlaser.com/apps
4. Enter "SCOUTPAL" into the Name field.
5. Enter the direct-lookup URL that you received from ScoutPal into the URL field.
6. Enter the single letter "i" into the Param field.
7. To have a custom icon for ScoutPal on your iphone, enter
     http://scoutpal.com/apple-touch-icon.png
   into the Icon URL field. This will give you the scoutpal icon which is very helpful when looking at a page full of buttons on your iPhone.
8. Scroll to the bottom of the RedLaser web page, and tap the "Build App" bar.
9. Click "+" at the bottom center of the page then click "add to home screen" and the app's icon should appear in an empty space on your iPhone home screen, as illustrated here:
    

Run the app, "scan" the bar code, and you will see a result similar to this:

If there is no bar code on the book you wish to lookup, simply type in an ISBN or UPC into the search field at the top of the results screen.