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Really hope that somebody will be able to help with this as I'm near losing my mind trying to understand why this happens.

I'm getting different results when scanning the same value in a Code 39 barcode using a regular USB barcode scanner and using my phone camera.

When scanning the value of 482168 using the barcode scanner, I get a value of 142673096 pasted into notepad; When scanning the value of 482172 using the barcode scanner, I get a value of 142673122 pasted into notepad; Values 482169 and 482171 are pasted correctly.

I thought initially that the problem was with the app that generates these barcodes, however, the same is happening when these are generated here https://barcode.tec-it.com/en/Code39FullASCII?data=482168

I thought that the length and width of the barcode may have been the problem, but adjusting them did not have any effect.

Has anyone ever stumbled upon anything similar and could suggest why these would be read and encoded differently?

Aleksandr Sergunin
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  • I suspect the scanner is mis-identifying the problem barcodes as interleaved 2of5 (ITF). Both symbologies use a narrow-wide encoding, with ITF having some inherent issues that scanners must deal with. Can you configure the USB scanner to only accept code39 (or not accept ITF)? – Mark Warren Aug 13 '20 at 14:06
  • Hi Mark, thanks for your message. I've scanned the command codes from the user manual to disable interleaved 2of5, as well as industrial 2of5 just in case, however, I am still getting the wrong value scanned. – Aleksandr Sergunin Aug 14 '20 at 11:52

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I found this problem to be really interesting, so I compared the various barcode types to see what could be causing the scanner to mis-identify the barcodes. It turns out that Italian Pharmacode (also known as Code 32) is an exact match. Code32 is actually code39 using a compression scheme.

Here is 482168 in code39:

enter image description here

And 142673096 in code32:

enter image description here

It looks like your scanner is prioritizing code32 over code39. So you just need to disable code32 in your scanner.

Mark Warren
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