Reading Barcodes with PixelSense

Question

How can I read a standard barcode, using the Microsoft PixelSense, and act upon it in code?

I wish to create something similar to the bit codes within the TagVisualizer, but want to be able to a standard bar code (off the back of an employee id). Is the PixelSense able to extract this information and provide me a number, or any amount of information that I might be able to parse apart?

Answer 1

Standard barcodes have too much detail to be recognized by Microsoft Pixelsense. You will need an external device to read them. From the Tagged objects for ms surface 2.0 whitepaper

Barcode Support

A barcode is an optical machine-readable representation of data typically used for scanning products or tracking inventory. The most common barcode is the UPC code used for scanning products at point of sale terminals. The best barcode integration for Surface uses a dedicated external barcode scanning device that can be built into the Surface enclosure, connecting to the unit via USB. Surface does not support displaying barcodes for scanning by external devices.