Hardware might be needed after all
Businesses are increasingly aware that barcode verification is essential. After all, if your barcodes don’t scan properly, retail giants such as Walmart might fine you – or stop carrying your products altogether.
Many people mistakenly believe that what they need is verification software or barcode quality software that they can feed images to. While many business problems can be solved with software, this is not the case with barcode verification. Verification equipment is an essential part of how to test a barcode.
Here’s why: regardless of whether you have barcode verification software, you still need hardware to obtain high quality, accurately calibrated images. To start, you need the industrial-grade optics that offer the resolution necessary to meet ISO verification standards. Turnkey barcode verification hardware includes these optics.
So if you purchase only verification software, you still need to buy – or design and build – an optical system that will meet ISO standards.
You also need a system for calibrating your hardware so that your image can be interpreted correctly according to ISO standards.
If you’re interested in doing all of this engineering, it’s doable. Your costs might exceed $100,000 or more. Or you could turn to existing barcode verification systems, which can cost under $4,000.
For contrast, let’s imagine you need a new car. You could engineer the car yourself, source or build your own parts, get the necessary government regulations approval, etc. or you could just go out and buy a car.
Bottom line: if your company uses packaging or barcoding in any way, you need to be able to verify that each print run will work. The only way to verify is with ISO standards. And barcode verification software alone cannot do this. You either need to build the hardware, or by a ready-made system such as ours.
As for the future, barcode verification will continue to be a hardware-based solution. Software becomes more powerful every year. But for that software to function, you still need industrial grade optics, and a properly calibrated system, to accurately capture and verify your barcodes.