What comes next in this sequence? (Reverse-engineering proprietary barcode)

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kenkeniff

628 posts

Ultimate Geek

#179337 4-Sep-2015 12:49

raytaylor

4014 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#1379928 4-Sep-2015 18:11

Not sure but I do note there is 16 bits of information in that code.
So 2^16 = 65,536 possibilities

Are you trying to work out what J-021 is?

Do you know if the barcode represents J- also?
Or does it just represent 021 and the reader knows that the format is to have a J- in front?

What is the total range of the barcode? Letters, numbers, J-* or *-*** or something else?

Looks too difficult to me

edit: Okay so the top three marks are different and so I dont think that the barcode has the J- represented in it, unless there is some sort of decoding done at the end.

Ray Taylor

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kenkeniff

628 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1380136 5-Sep-2015 09:51

raytaylor:

Are you trying to work out what J-021 is?

Yes I'm trying to work out how to generate J-nnn myself.

Do you know if the barcode represents J- also?
Or does it just represent 021 and the reader knows that the format is to have a J- in front?

The application that utilises the barcode on displays the number e.g. 9, 10, 11 etc so "J-" maybe irrelevant.

What is the total range of the barcode? Letters, numbers, J-* or *-*** or something else?

The have a range of barcodes up to 240 however would like to test if my application would recognise any barcodes generated up to 999.

kenkeniff

628 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1380910 7-Sep-2015 08:59

This is the circuit used to read the barcode, hopefully someone can make use of it:

Markings are:
IS-T XM
ЯU (Recognized Component Mark)

IC:
VHC
165
C3 30

LesF

176 posts

Master Geek

#1394857 26-Sep-2015 14:50

Did you get any further with this? Its intriguing but I couldn't see a logical sequence. Have you got any further background details on what the codes do or what they signify? The chip appears to be a 8 bit shift register, but what does it feed the scanned values to? Is there a processor with on-chip ROM code, or something running embedded software to process the barcode values?

LesF

176 posts

Master Geek

#1394910 26-Sep-2015 16:19

It could possibly have these bit values, given a zero-based sequence, black=0 white=1

?? ?? ?? ?? ?? 02 04 08
16 ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ??

But the other bits are uncertain, it may not a numeric series.

kenkeniff

628 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1395387 27-Sep-2015 21:33

LesF: Did you get any further with this?

Got a bit of progress on Stack Exchange however still a way to go: http://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/21962/what-comes-next-in-this-binary-sequence

Aredwood

3885 posts

Uber Geek

#1395456 28-Sep-2015 02:17

I'm starting to see a pattern. Yep I should be asleep instead of trying to figure out how the barcodes are generated. Will hopefully post back tomorrow.