MyHalal Scanner

During my visit to Invention, Innovation and Design Expo 2013 (IIDE 2013) last Friday, I came across with a project called MyHalal Scanner invented by a group of students from Faculty of Electrical Engineering consisting Muzirah Kassim, Cik Ku Haroswati, Zamri Abu Bakar, Muhammad Hafiz MAzlan Zaharuddin, Mohd Zikrul Hakim Noor, Mohd Farid Saaid and Megat Syahirul Amin Megat Ali.

Halal product is one of the world’s fastest growing sectors. Nowadays, Muslims in Malaysia are aware and particular to the concept of Halal and their inherent rights to buy and consume halal food and products. Due to the increasing in Halal product demands, there are traders taking advantage of the existing situation by placing Halal signage on their non halal-certified premise and products.

With a rapid growth of mobile phone, so do the mobile applications. Due to the advancement, the students developed this mobile-based barcode application for Muslim android users to identify the Halal status which prepared in accordance to Islamic Law, of the product using mobile device.

MyHalal Scanner was developed in Android platform because of its features to openness, equal for all applications, quick and easy development and application freedom (no boundaries). This application runs on Android 2.1 and can be used at higher API level. Based on their research, Android users were the most in Malaysia.

The significant of this project are to provide an application to help smartphone users verify Halal status straight from product barcodes on time without constraint. The existing halal applications cost users with data chargesfor each product verification. MyHalal however acquire no charges to the users as MyHalal is functioned by cross-checking barcodes with its own database. MyHalal Scanner users can easily scan barcode of products or even search via database. One of the features in this application enables user to contact directly to companies and even JAKIM offices. Below is the surface of the application.

The objectives of this project are to design mobile access system through smartphone algorithm and verification on the Halal product without accessing network as well as to develop Halal product database structure.

This project has received silver award in IID FKE 2011 and applied for its patent. For time being, this application has only includes barcodes for certain Nestle products only. The students would like to expand their database by proposing MyHalal application to other food manufacturing companies. They were in progress to acquire fund in order to move one step ahead.