[DuckRacer1]

Hi there, I own your fantastic app, but since I only have a Mac Mini, I don't want to shell out $150 for an iSight. Are there any other much cheaper alternatives (I'm thinking $30ish) to that that can scan the barcodes?

[Delicious Monster]

What we really need is a user-built list of compatibility experiences with various models and versions of the myriad cameras, drivers, and scanners out there.

Until then, I don't have any specific advice of that sort, other than keep your receipt.

That said, some general knowledge:

The driver that ships with Logitech cameras crashes Delicious Library. The company that makes the driver, IOXperts, has a better driver that works properly, but they charge $20 for it.

That said, you can download it and try it for free. I think it runs for 30 minutes at time before being registered. If you have or can get free a Logitech camera, $20 might be worth it.

On the other hand, if you need to spend the $30 on hardware, you're stuck with one of the open source drivers. There's one called Macam that used to always show up in crash reports, until their version 0.8.8, which seemed to work great. Unfortunately it seems their newest version, 0.9, is worse in terms of Delicious Library compatibility.

There are a few other drivers that show up in crash reports, but none of them come to mind as being recently reformed. Of course, the problem with information gleaned from crash reports is there could be an amazing driver out there that never crashes and I would never know about it.

Finally, you might go a different route and find a cue cat. To hear tell, you can get them for practically free from (I don't know, eBay?) then hack them to make them send actual numbers and use them with Delicious Library.

[DuckRacer1]

Okay, thanks for your help.

[stustaff]

If you want a cheap cam then get Amazon.com: Macally Portable Goose Neck USB Video Web Cam - ICECAM: Electronics its only $30 and works fine on my ibook

EDIT I should add I also have the iChatUSBCam software running to allow my icecam to run in ichat I dont know if its this that makes it work in DL?

[rubaiyat]

I got Delicious Library as part of my MacHeist purchase, just beore Christmas, but haven't used it because I have a PPC iMac 17" iMac with no inbuilt camera.

Are you saying I can use this with my ordinary scanner? I have a HP Deskjet F380 All in one printer.

I'd love to use DL, it looks so wickedly useful!

[Delicious Monster]

So by scanner we mean laser barcode scanner, not, like, a flatbed scanner.

But aside from scanning barcodes, there are a number of ways to input items into Delicious Library.

Pressing the "plus" icon or typing ⌘n will create a new, blank item. You can then search by title, creator, or number: ISBN, EAN (barcode number), or ASIN (Amazon number). You can also press "enter details" and enter the item's information by hand, including setting a picture.

You can drag-drop or option-click items in Delicious Library's search results, as well as the "similar" pane. So, if you have a lot of books by the same author, it might actually be faster to do an author search than to scan every individual book.

Finally, you can search Amazon's websites directly and drag-drop items from Safari into Delicious Library.

[Delicious Monster]

So you may have heard that the latest Tiger update, 10.4.9, adds iChat support for "USB Video Class" webcams. Unfortunately a little research shows that your run-of-the-mill el cheapo $20 webcam is not USB Video Class compatible, but many higher-end USB webcams are. A little tour of Logitech's site reveals a compatibility list:

QuickCam Ultra Vision SE [P/N 860-00023]
QuickCam Ultra Vision [P/N 861238]
QuickCam Orbit/Sphere MP [P/N 861305]
QuickCam Fusion [P/N 861304]
QuickCam Pro 5000 [P/N 861306]
QuickCam for Notebooks Pro [P/N 861303]

I ran over to the local office supply store and bought a QuickCam Pro 5000, plugged it in, and son of gun, it works in iChat and Delicious Library without so much as installing a driver, like it's supposed to be. (For the cheapskates out there already tabbing over to eBay, note that a lot of these webcams have older versions that were not USB Video Class compatible, so double-check those part numbers.)

[brokenjago]

Note that any USB Webcam certified for Vista is supposed to be UVC compatible, and so should work with iChat and DL.

[rubaiyat]

Guess you have to include me in among the cheapskates who think over $60 is too much to pay for this one trick.

I'll be waiting till my next iMac purchase to start using Delicious Library. All the other options seem too clumsy to make the whole shebang to work. The exact requirements should be made clearer on the website.

Not to criticise Delicious Library which, when it works, is one good reason to have a current Mac

[rubaiyat]

I'll be giving the Tevian WebCam from Aldi a try for 3 reasons:

1 They are cheap

2. They are returnable

3. They are usually surprisingly good and compatible

Hey, it can't hurt!

[brokenjago]

Link?

[rubaiyat]

ALDI head office.

Pick your country and look for the electronic catalogs.

I'm in Australia so the camera and other gadgets are here.

[Delicious Monster]

A brief dispatch from the front lines, which is to say, support email. A user reports that the XBox camera works great, which means it's probably UVC. I would give you more details but I don't own an XBox. If you do, try hooking it up to your Mac and seeing what happens.

Also, I just wanted to add for the penny-pinchers out there, there are a bunch of "cheapskate" methods out there, but we're just talking easy, out of the box support here. A lot of people are willing to jump through a lot of hoops to save a few bones, and there's nothing wrong with that.

If you want to track down a cuecat and spend your afternoon bending pins, or buy a used $3 webcam from the local PC recycler and mess around with drivers, that's up to you. Those methods still exist, but officially, as detailed on the website, we support the iSight and the iSight alone.

This thread is just a recognition that, for some people, that's not an option anymore. Now, that said, if we could put our noggins together and find an ideal solution (as defined by "camera being given away for free that works out of the box") or something close to it, that would be awesome.

Believe me, we didn't spend 5 months writing deconvolution algorithms for the internal iSight because we like making people buy extra hardware!

[yhtomitb]

I just bought, and will be returning, the Logitech QuickCam Fusion. It appears that it will work fine for iChat, and would be compatible with Delicious Library except for it's inability to manually (or Auto) focus for closeups of barcodes. Does anyone else have any suggestions? I checked the Logitech site and from what I could tell, all their cameras are now fixed focus. That means none of them will work with DL.

[Delicious Monster]

I can't speak to the peculiarities of that particular camera, but I will point out that Delicious LIbrary does work with fixed focus cameras and can read blurry barcodes.

You have to make sure the barcode is well and evenly lit and you will probably have to do some experimenting to find the sweet spot for your particular camera. I like to start as far from the lens as I can get and slowly move closer.

The barcode does not have to fill the screen, as long as it intersects two red lines. Some cameras will scan a barcode that is quite far from the lens.

Keeping the receipt is a good idea, but experimentation is the only way to tell what will and won't work. Just because it doesn't focus doesn't mean it doesn't work, and as I said, I've personally confirmed that at least one Logitech UVC camera works with Delicious Library, and when I say works, I mean it shows up as a video source and scans barcodes.

[yhtomitb]

I did actually try the camera, but I could not get the barcodes to read. They were really out of focus. Which Logitech camera did you have success with?

[Delicious Monster]

*scroll*

*scroll*

*scroll*

a QuickCam Pro 5000

[yhtomitb]

I just tried out the Logitech QuickCam Chat for $29.99. It doesn't register for either iChat or DL, even though it says it is Vista compliant. Too bad, it has a focus ring for closeup use. I'll try something else and let you all know how it works out, but for now avoid the QuickCam Chat.

[pidgeon92]

I picked up a Logitech Quickcam 4000 the other day, hoping it would word with Delicious Library. Obviously it did not out of the box, but I downloaded the driver from IOXperts and it sort of works. The video comes up in DL, with the bar code lines, and it will scan a barcode (great so far). But it hangs. and hangs. and hangs. I've timed it several times over a week, and I get 9-11 seconds of time to get a good scan, and then the image hangs for almost 30 seconds. Then I get another 9-11 seconds of record time, then another 30 seconds of hang... I have not purchased the driver, and will not until I manage to get it to quit hanging. I submitted a support request with IOXperts about a week ago, but have not received a reply.

What I am not certain of is whether it is the driver or DL that is causing the hang. I am using an iMac G4 with 1MB ram, OS X 10.4.10. Any ideas? I have downloaded and installed the driver twice. I tried the Macam driver but that did not work at all, DL could not find the signal.

[Delicious Monster]

Is the cam plugged directly into the computer? Is there an external drive hooked up to the machine?

Daisy chained cameras tend to cut in and out, especially if they are chained to drives, but I've also heard of machines getting a camera-stalling power drain from just having a drive on the same bus.

Also make sure no other software is vying for the cam's attention.

Other than that, I'm not sure who the culprit is.

[pidgeon92]

The webcam is directly hooked up to a USB port, I did that after reading that it shouldn't be on a hub. I do indeed have an external hard drive (purchased, of course, after my last internal hard drive died and was NOT backed up). I will remove it temporarily and try again. Thanks!

[pidgeon92]

I unplugged my external hard drive - which is firewire - and it didn't change anything. I removed my USB hubs and plugged in only my tablet, my keyboard and the webcam. Still hangs in DL. I rebooted a few times. Still hangs. I am sad.

[Delicious Monster]

Does it hang even if you are not scanning anything? OR could the hanging coincide with the network lag caused by the lookups?

Also, is your Recent Imports shelf clean? That is to say, does it have 25 items, or is it full of unresolved lookups? If the latter, try cleaning it up and see if that helps.

[pidgeon92]

It hangs even when I am not scanning anything. 9-11 seconds on, 30 seconds hang. As far as I can tell this is only happening in DL. I haven't really tested it in any other application, as I don't do Chat, but I was on the new Macheist thing they are doing, and they have this goofy setup where it opens the webcam and there was no hanging there.

I'm going to stick to entering the items by keyboard until I get this webcam functional (I don't like giving up ), buy a new iMac with built in iSight (oooh, brushed steel sounds sooo nice), or get a proper bar code scanner (silly, I know, but I love my gadgets).

A nice feature to add to the next upgrade would be a shortcut key whereby you can add new items as the bar code number (now I used command N and have to tab three times to get to the bar code number field). Lazy, I know.

The recent import shelf does have a few items on it.... How do I clean it? I don't see anything that is unresolved.

[Delicious Monster]

Being important, but off topic, I've answered this question in its own thread.

[forkmedia]

Originally Posted by Delicious Monster 

What we really need is a user-built list of compatibility experiences with various models and versions of the myriad cameras, drivers, and scanners out there.

I have an older Sony TRV-730 video camera (with firewire). I was pleasantly surprised to find that it works without any adjustments. I barely get the barcode near the lens and it instantly reads and looks up the item.

[Delicious Monster]

Looks like those crazy hackers at ecamm have pulled into the lead for cheapest UVC camera with their iMage:

Ecamm Network: iMage Webcam - Driverless Webcam for Mac OS X, iChat, Skype and more

Their price is $59.95 for 1, $110.95 for 2. They actually gave us one of these at C4[1] last weekend but I have yet to actually try it.

[euclidjr]

I can confirm that the Xbox Live Vision Camera does work with a Santa Rosa MBP extremely well. I adjusted the focus to the shortest possible and set the cam so that the focus point was right at the edge of a table to give me a distance guide. The iSight works okay on this iteration MBP, but the focusable Xbox cam really does the trick.

[cmlp]

I'm just wondering how you choose which camera DL sees? I want to trial a Logitech camera with the various drivers that are around, but DL keeps selecting my build-in iSight by default.

[MacMatvei]

Anyone can confirm that the logitech fusion scans barcodes reliably?

Mine's video feed does show up in DL, but it never beeps and never fetches info from amazon.

thanks.

[Delicious Monster]

I'm just wondering how you choose which camera DL sees?

There is no way to select a camera in the current version, but if someone else (such as iChat or Photo Booth) is using your internal iSight, Delicious Library will pick up the next available camera.

Mine's video feed does show up in DL, but it never beeps and never fetches info from amazon.

If your camera is showing up in Delicious Library, it's working. If it's not scanning, that's a separate issue. If the camera can be manually focused, try focusing it on the barcode. If not, follow the general rules for scanning blurry barcodes:

Although Delicious Library can read the blurry barcode, it's a bit tricky to find the "sweet spot" for best scanning, as it seems to vary from camera to camera.

Bear in mind, you don't have to fill the screen with the barcode. As long as two of the red "laser" lines intersect the barcode, it should be able to scan, even if it is quite small. I get fantastic results on my internal iSight holding the barcode about a foot back.

A good method to use it to hold your barcode as far as you can while still having two lines intersect. Slowly move the barcode toward the camera, so when it hits that best focus, it will scan right in. Make sure you have your sound on, as Delicious Library will beep to let you know when it's scanned, sometimes several seconds before there's any visual indication.

In general, make sure the items you are trying to scan are lit well, showing on the scanner window as black-and-white, rather than gray, and do not have glare on them. Some barcodes are harder to scan than others. For example, the smaller the barcode, the harder it is to read. For barcodes with a second, smaller barcode next to the main code, covering the smaller code with an index card or your other hand may help.

If you're scanning mass-market paperbacks, remember to scan the "Bookland" barcode on the inside front cover, not the grocery store barcode on the back—aside from giving useless results, it's also harder to scan.

Other than that, if you can't get a barcode to work, you can also enter items by typing the barcode number, ISBN, title, creator, or even dragging them in from Amazon.com in Safari.

Sorry for the trouble. Reading blurry barcodes is just not something science has completely solved.

[MacMatvei]

thanks. Still not working, but I did purchase the full version of delicious monster anyway. I've resorted to getting them in by hand... (about 1000 cds! ouch!). Too bad I bought the web cam expressly for DL duty....

Wonder if I should return it to the store... oh well.

[cmlp]

Originally Posted by Delicious Monster 

There is no way to select a camera in the current version, but if someone else (such as iChat or Photo Booth) is using your internal iSight, Delicious Library will pick up the next available camera.

Thanks, I ended up stumbling over that solution, myself. Note I had good luck getting my cheapo Logitech QuickCam to work with the macam drivers (macam : USB webcam support for Mac OS X), but not so much luck scanning any barcodes due to the blurry image the camera returns, but I'll try some of the tips you mentioned.