title: Can ZXing be used in a Xamarin Android or Windows Phone 8 solution to "cast" a Phone's Camera as a Barcode Scanner?
body: <p>I know there are apps to scan barcodes; and there is the popular <a href="http://zxingnet.codeplex.com/" rel="nofollow">ZXing OSS</a>, which I see includes such interesting demos as "Windows Phone demo (demonstrates decoding of static images and from a camera)", but what we would actually prefer is to use ZXing, if possible, in a Xamarin Android project.</p>
  
  <p>Can ZXing be used for that? If anybody has experience with that, can they report on the performance and battery-friendliness (or lack thereof) of doing so? Alternatively, how is it in Windows Phone? I see that assemblies are available for WP8, also for Portable Class Library, which is the "Core" (shared) part of the Xamarin solution. This indicates an affirmative answer to my question, but I'm not sure...</p>
  
  <p>If there are phones that sport built-in barcode scanners or offer native camera-as-barcode funtionalilty, can this device/service be accessed via an API from a custom app? I'm thinking of the way Windows 8 (and I assume Windows Phone 8, then) works, where devices/suchlike services can be accessed from any app. If this is possible, we may have to at least consider foregoing Android for Windows Phone (8).</p>
  
  <p>So: can ZXing be used in a Xamarin Android solution to "cast" a Phone's Camera as a Barcode Scanner? If we can find a good enough hardware/software solution on one platform, although this is a Xamarin/cross-platform solution, it's feasible that we end up only using that one "best" solution, whether it be Android or WP8 (probably not iOS, but that's possible, too).</p>
  
  <h2>UPDATE</h2>
  
  <p>I just found out there is also a "<a href="http://components.xamarin.com/view/scandit" rel="nofollow">Scandit Barcode Scanner SDK</a>"</p>