Android Inventory App for Real-World Barcode Scanning – Small, Large and Difficult Barcodes
Guillaume Prost-Dame
Hi everyone,
I built ScanYourStock, an Android inventory and stock-counting app for scanning barcodes and QR codes, checking physical inventory against imported lists, and recording what was actually found in the field.
The app is built with Python, Kivy and Buildozer, which is why I'm sharing this here, but I'd also like to talk about a real-world barcode problem I ran into while using it.
A box has its own barcode. Inside that box are products grouped into lots, and the individual products have their own barcodes identifying the actual product references.
This creates a practical question: should the operator scan the box, or scan the actual products inside it?
Scanning the box is fast. It confirms that the expected box was found.
Scanning the individual products gives much stronger confirmation of what was physically picked — which is useful when the goal is to verify that the order picker actually received or collected the expected products.
The problem is that real-world barcodes aren't always convenient.
Some are medium-sized and scan instantly. Some are extremely small and may require moving or removing plastic wrapping before the camera can read them cleanly. Others are very large and complex and are much easier to scan from a particular direction.
They are all scannable. The real problem is time.
If every product is scanned, verification is better, but the operator spends more time scanning. If only the outer box is scanned, the workflow is faster, but you're trusting more of what is supposed to be inside.
So I'm trying to find the right balance between fast warehouse scanning and actual physical verification.
From the Kivy/Android side, I'm also interested in how other developers handle difficult barcode conditions: very small labels, oversized codes, plastic wrapping, orientation, or several visible barcodes at once.
ScanYourStock is already published on Android, so this is a real production use case rather than a test project.
Google Play:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=all_here.really.all_here