Sending a barcode to a software on my pc (wifi available)

Hi guys,
I'm a starting programmer on the Microsoft Hololens. I would like to scan a barcode with the Hololens and then send it as string or int to my PC an put it in another software. Is this possible and how should I do this ?
Thanks in advance!
Best Answer
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mtaulty ✭✭
Hi,
Yes. This is possible. In terms of scanning a barcode, there are a number of ways of doing it with perhaps the first option being to take a look at this document which talks about using the built-in UWP BarcodeScanner class with image frames from the HoloLens web camera in order to scan barcodes.
This works on HoloLens. One challenge though (if I remember correctly) is that this document assumes you want a 2D UI using the system's preview capability. On HoloLens, you are perhaps working in a 3D/Unity environment and you probably don't need to preview what's coming from the camera because you can already see it! I wrote some code around that idea here although it could now be a little out of date but might give you some pointers.
If you now have a barcode, how to get it to your PC? There are lots of ways that you could do this. You could use traditional networking techniques like having a datagram/stream socket between the two devices. You could use something like Bluetooth to advertise the data & pick it up. You could combine the two techniques and I have some old code here which you might repurpose to do just that.
You could use a cloud mechanism like an Azure queue. You could have both devices connect to a cloud service (like a SignalR implementation) and pass the information that way. You could use something like "Project Rome" to invoke a remote 'app service' on another device.
I hope that helps a little - the main thing is that this is definitely achievable, you just need to pick the way that's best for your scenario.
5
Answers
Hi,
Yes. This is possible. In terms of scanning a barcode, there are a number of ways of doing it with perhaps the first option being to take a look at this document which talks about using the built-in UWP BarcodeScanner class with image frames from the HoloLens web camera in order to scan barcodes.
This works on HoloLens. One challenge though (if I remember correctly) is that this document assumes you want a 2D UI using the system's preview capability. On HoloLens, you are perhaps working in a 3D/Unity environment and you probably don't need to preview what's coming from the camera because you can already see it! I wrote some code around that idea here although it could now be a little out of date but might give you some pointers.
If you now have a barcode, how to get it to your PC? There are lots of ways that you could do this. You could use traditional networking techniques like having a datagram/stream socket between the two devices. You could use something like Bluetooth to advertise the data & pick it up. You could combine the two techniques and I have some old code here which you might repurpose to do just that.
You could use a cloud mechanism like an Azure queue. You could have both devices connect to a cloud service (like a SignalR implementation) and pass the information that way. You could use something like "Project Rome" to invoke a remote 'app service' on another device.
I hope that helps a little - the main thing is that this is definitely achievable, you just need to pick the way that's best for your scenario.
@mtaulty
I tried to make a connection by sending a string with sockets (TCP). It works in Unity but when I want to build my solution to visual studio 2017 there are some build errors due to System. Net is not supported by unity. I tried to insert an asset 'System.Net.dll' but it doesn't work. Do you have a solution for this?
public void Click()
{
client = new Socket(AddressFamily.InterNetwork, SocketType.Stream, ProtocolType.Tcp);
IPAddress ip = IPAddress.Parse("10.10.3.118");
IPEndPoint remotePc = new IPEndPoint(ip, 7001);
client.Connect(remotePc);