Digikey/Mouser barcodes

[twam]

Hi everybody,

I'm currently writing a small Python-based command line tool to track my part inventory. To ease adding all the data I want to scan all the ESD bags from Digikey/Mouser which contain information about the parts inside.

Sadly, the only 'documentation' about the Digikey barcodes I found so far is https://github.com/claudyus/digikey-barcode-reader. I asked the Digikey support, but the claim that they have no scheme for the barcode data.

For the Mouser bags most of the information is there in individual 1D barcodes, that's good. But there is also an undocumented 2D barcode which seems to hold also some parts of the information encode in the 1D and thus scanning that one might be much faster.

Does anybody has some information about how information is coded in those barcodes or does some similar kind of parsing?

[bombledmonk]

This probably isn't relevant to your current request, but I did find this...
http://www.ecianow.org/standards-practices/2d-barcode-labeling/

[DimitriP]

Which barcode field are you having trouble reading ?
I tried scanning the Mouser P/N into this post and the reader took a couple of tries before it would read it
Here is the scan of my now obsolete part : 863-MC74AC86NG

[twam]

I don't have any problems reading the barcode into the PC. It attached an example of one of my Mouser bags. If I read the 2D barcode in the upper left I get the following string

>[)>06K958576614K0051PLM75BD,118Q1011K0395186654LTH]

In this string you can for example see the MfG P/N LM75BD,118. But when the Bag hasn't printed the MfG P/N but a Customer P/N instead, then this is seen there. So my question is now, how can I decode the given string reliable into separate fields without knowing the content of the other barcodes on the bag.

[DimitriP]

The long way around this would be to print your own 1D label for the parts that don't have it as they come in.

And the even longer way would be to match an ordered part# (if you are keeping track of it) with the  just scanned 2D label and "marry" the two.  So the 2D label is "just a string" attached to a "real part".

[Christina]

Updates since the last post:

1) Digikey has a published API and client (C#, anyway).  You have to register with them to use it, but this might be the easiest way to collect information about each part as it is scanned. https://github.com/digikey/ApiClient (Thank you to Ted Yapo for this link in his Hackaday article. See #3.)

2) Digikey now has a phone app. You can use the barcode scanner to find the component online. https://www.digikey.com/en/resources/mobile-applications

3) Ted Yapo was also working on a solution: https://hackaday.io/project/90456-ar-workbench/log/131388-reading-digikey-barcodes