Scanner problems on Samsung devices

[cluck]

The symptom I'm seeing is that pretixdroid is not able to read the configuration QR-code on my Samsung S4 Mini with an 8-Megapixel camera (the autofocus never focuses correctly, and instead continuously "pumps").

The software "Barcode Scanner" (https://www.github.com/zxing/zxing) instead is perfectly able to scan the code on the same device. Maybe it's worth thinking of integrating with this software via Intents?

[jfwiebe]

Hi Claudio,
thanks for your comment! I also had similar problems like you which could be solved by changing distance to the code, moving and rotating etc., but I agree with you this can not be a permanent condition because it also happens with ticket codes and reduces you scanning capacity dramatically.

In my opinion, integrating an external scanner would result in a bad user experience for three main reasons:

1. The user needs to download a second app
2. switching tasks takes its time and it must be performed on every scan twice
3. you can not see the image of your camera and the scan result on one screen

I think we should look into the ZXling libary (which we are currently using) and try to find ways to optimize the focus (focus on pressing into the camera image?).

Best regards,
Jan Felix

[raphaelm]

The symptom I'm seeing is that pretixdroid is not able to read the configuration QR-code on my Samsung S4 Mini with an 8-Megapixel camera (the autofocus never focuses correctly, and instead continuously "pumps").

I hear similar reports repeatedly over the last time, all of them are from Samsung phones (e.g. SM-J320FN), so I suspect something there.

The software "Barcode Scanner" (https://www.github.com/zxing/zxing) instead is perfectly able to scan the code on the same device. Maybe it's worth thinking of integrating with this software via Intents?

Intents is way to slow for this purpose, not an option. However, we already do use the scanning engine of ZXing (however, maybe not the latest version).

[raphaelm]

I just released 1.5 to the play store with an updated underlying library. I don't really expect this to be fixed, but please test it and let me know nevertheless.

[cluck]

Unfortunately this hasn't improved the situation yet.

The library for ZXingScannerView comes with sample apps, and I could confirm the issue using the simple and full views there.

But interestingly the custom view finder sample actually works!

[raphaelm]

Okay, now it's getting really weird. I'll experiment with custom view finders then :D

[niko-h]

I am experiencing this with an HTC One, Android 4.4. Autofocus keeps "pumping", says "Nicht synchronisiert" in the bottom right of the screen.
Code is scanned instantly with another qr-code-scanner-app.
Tried to scan from various displays at different ranges and angles without any success.