Systems and Development Perspective
From SoftwarePractice.org
Systems Development
Overall, our program will be able to recognise and decipher a number of UPC-A barcodes. It will not be able to process any other barcode configurations as the program is purely based on properties of UPC-A.
The barcode should therefore, be initially scanned within computer for initialisation of the program. One thing to note, is that the scanning quality of the barcode image must be superior. We found numerous cases, while researching on the Internet, where due to scanning errors, the barcodes were unable to be processed.
As part of a product, there may be a way, especially within the retail industry, where equipment is designed to take an imaging photo of the barcode. Once allocated within the program, the program automatically processes it. The creation of this type of equipment is integral in for speed and efficiency within a fast-paced consumer environment.
The program, itself, currently contains a lot of areas which need to be fixed. Due to our limited knowledge, as well as the nature of Matlab, a perfect construction of barcode imaging was not created. In a perfect world, the program would read all images, allowing for a wide distribution of noise. The program, as it stands, we believe, is only suitable for primitve barcode noise and blurring. Thus, it is probably not suitable for a wide spectrum of barcodes.
We may also need to determine how to integrate all the sections: GUI, deblur, noise, angular rotation, image extraction, and image conversion together successfully. Our current program can successfully operate each section individually. Hence, for integration within a larger system, would consist of amalgamating the entire program so each component runs in succession.
Since many retail environments are now employing barcode scanner systems and programs which can decipher a range of different barcode types, for our program to be suitable for a larger system, this may need to be taken into consideration.
