Reputation: 213

Which 2d barcode has the highest data capacity/density

;)

if you wanted encode 2mb of data onto a 2d-bar code, which 2-bar code would be good to starting point or recommend.

There are lots and different types of 2dbar codes out today,Aztec 2-d barcodes,maxicodes,Pdf417,Microsoft HCCB,vericodes....etc...lots.... all unique in their own way.

i guess in a nutshell my questions is.... which barcode would make a good start off point to encode 2mb of data??

i tried reading through the Qr code international standard turns out even @ version 40L the most amount of data you could encode is on to a Qr code is

1) numeric data: 7 089 characters

2) alphanumeric data: 4 296 characters

3) 8-bit byte data: 2 953 characters

4) Kanji data: 1 817 characters

which are all a far cry from the 17million bits thats is 2mb

my goal was to create something like

http://realestatemobilemarketingsolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/real-estate-mobile-marketing.png

After you scan the barcode you can view photos of the house/property on your phone, you dont have to walk-in or wait for an open home,20 photos @ 100kb each is about 2mb

Upvotes: 7

Answers (5)

Meower68

Reputation: 1009

Even if you could create a single 2D barcode which will encode the whole thing, the user won't be able to scan the whole thing in one go. No one has a cellphone imager which will support that kind of resolution. Your best bet is to do a QR-code with a URL in it.

Things like DataMatrix and QR-codes are extensible. You have a limit to how much data can be encoded into one block, but you CAN create a code which has multiple blocks. Indeed, if you look at this page, you'll see a discussion of using pages full of 2D barcodes as a form of data backup. They were able to fit up to 1/2 MByte of raw data into a single page. That's at 600 dpi, which will require a scanner (not a smartphone) to decode.

From what I've been reading, DataMatrix tends to have less overhead and, therefore, will stuff more (payload) data into a square inch for a given DPI. My analysis says that, at 300 dpi, you can expect to encode no more than about 6.6 kB / in². 1 MB would need about 155 in². You would need a mobile app capable of shooting multiple images (tiles) of a very large image and either:

compositing the tiles into one large image for decoding OR
decoding each of the tiles and reconstructing the original data from the pieces

I know of no app which will do that. That might be an opportunity.

I've pondered providing bulk data via 2D barcodes. I was pondering publishing a mobile app in a magazine, such that people could get the app without needing to provide a website / FTP site where they could download it. Assuming there was an app which could decode such a monster, the end user would have to be patient enough to scan the whole thing. It would be easier to provide a large 2D barcode containing a .torrent file, such that existing BitTorrent apps could download the resulting app; I have a .torrent for a recent Linux Live-DVD (multi-GB total download) where the .torrent file is < 32 KB. That would need about 4.9 in² at 300 dpi.

I've also pondered whether a research paper could include a 2D barcode containing data and code, such that other people could scan the barcode, extract a .zip file containing the data and the analysis code (no need to re-key anything) and replicate the analysis. Depending on the size of the .zip file, this could all fit on a single page.

Oklahoma Department of Revenue already has PDF tax forms which will take all of your entered data and create a PDF417 2D barcode block, such that you can print the form and they can just scan the barcode to input your tax form submission; no keying or OCR needed. The latest US Passport forms do the same thing, if you use the State Dept's "Form Filler" site to key the data and print the form.

Upvotes: 9

Zimba

Reputation: 3683

lol you don't have to encode a picture (images of property) to a picture (qr code of image) for others to view an open home. Instead of scanning a qr code to see a picture, viewers can just see the picture on whatever media the code would have been printed.

The size of the qr code image would probably be bigger than the image of the house for a good resolution of the image.

QR code was developed for automation eg. sorting parcels, similar to punch card readers from the past millennium which bypassed human involvement, thereby speeding up process work. It requires less programming than OCR software and smaller footprint (memory/storage/processor).

In your case, the property images would be viewed by people, who can just see the property instead of seeing a QR code to be scanned to see the images. The idea is good though, scanning data directly instead of scanning a link to data held on some server, requiring network connection to the server. In programming, a similar concept is passing data by value instead of reference.

One possible solution would be to make a scanner that can read a matrix of QR codes, and decode. Another would be to scan a QR code, store, then scan next code, and when all codes have been scanned and stored in device, decode, similar to reading pages in a book, to make sense of the whole book, like this multi code scanner.

Another possible solution, to increase data density is to add a parallel dimension eg. colored QR code, or different shapes similar to concept in Grid Matrix Code.

A hologram could also store multiple codes in the same image, to be scanned from different angles, for different 'pages'.

For pictures, since there are only 95 printable characters in ASCII, QR can be generated after some sort of image encoding eg. base64, making the space requirement much larger than the original 256 bit image. QR code is based on printable characters.

Voiceye code is able to store 250,000 characters, and so far is the highest density 2D code.

Upvotes: 1

Hvitis

Reputation: 555

I have developed a reader for JAB codes that can read whole audio file from a codebar. JAB codes are very high capacity due to polychrome nature.

Which 2d barcode has the highest data capacity/density

Answers (5)

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