# Unreadable barcodes

**URL:** <https://forum.dimagi.com/t/unreadable-barcodes/2098>\
**Category:** Users\
**Created:** [March 4, 2015, 4:23am UTC](https://forum.dimagi.com/t/unreadable-barcodes/2098 "2015-03-04T04:23:57Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Charles\_Fleche1](https://dimagi.b-cdn.net/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Charles\_Fleche1](https://forum.dimagi.com/u/Charles_Fleche1)\
**Post date:** [March 4, 2015, 4:23am UTC](https://forum.dimagi.com/t/unreadable-barcodes/2098/1 "2015-03-04T04:23:57Z")

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Hi everyone,

This question follows a discussion with CommCare's developers :

> <https://github.com/dimagi/commcare-android/pull/162>
>
> In some circumstances (low lights, partially damaged barcode) a barcode maybe be… impossible to scan. This PR improve the usability of the Barcode widget by making its content editable by the user.
> 
> This PR simply replaces the TextView widget by an EditText.

One on our applications is making heavy use of barcodes / qrcodes. Some external  
factors can make reading barcodes harder than it should :

- light (indoor / outdoor, day / night)
- barcode itself (is it damaged ?)
- handset camera (cheap devices with bad camera can fail to read barcodes easily)

I was thinking about an User Interface tweak to fix this issue, but there are very  
good reasons why such a solution would be a bad idea.

For your projects, do you sometime have issues reading barcodes ? If so, how do you  
react ? What if a barcode or the lighting conditions are so bad that you just cannot  
read the code ?

Many thanks,

> **···**
>
> -- Charles Flèche mHealth Advisor Télécoms Sans Frontières http://www.tsfi.org Première Urgence - Aide Médicale Internationale http://www.pu-ami.org