Giving a Broken Barcode Scanner a New Life with Elixir and Nerves
The personal blog of Brian Carrigan, software and electronics engineer.
Giving a Broken Barcode Scanner a New Life with Elixir and Nerves launched on April 23, 2018 with 330 votes, #41 of 2,753 launches that month and more than 99% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 8 years on.
In plain words
Brian Carrigan's personal blog documents his software and electronics engineering projects. The site features Wunderscan, a project where he repurposed a discarded barcode scanner found at a reuse center into a pantry management tool. Using Elixir and Nerves, Carrigan restored the broken hardware and created a system to scan items and track household inventory. The blog shares technical details about the restoration and software development process.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
I didn’t actually plan this project, but rather it found me. I was at the Scrap Exchange, a local reuse center, when I found a very nice looking scanner that you might find at a grocery store kiosk. It had been ripped from its connectors and had unlabeled wires hanging from it; a bit of hardware gore if such a thing exists. It was labelled on sale for $6.25, and a quick search revealed that it originally retailed at over $500. I thought a great use of this would be to keep near our pantry so that when we are out of a spice or snack, we could just scan the item and it would get posted to our shopping list. I figured I would try to reverse engineer it, and if all else fails, scrap it for the…from bcarrigan.com
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