Create a Barcode Reader that will take images from an android phone.

Question

I have found plenty of expensive 3rd party applications that do this so I want write one myself instead. I have 2 problems. 1. I would need some code to grab any upc barcode from the phones camera. Or, have the user take pictures on the phone and allow the app to grab the images.
Then I need the library and sample code to grab the information off the barcode. I can populate an excel spreadsheet with the information. From what I see if you have the barcode dll libraryies the reading of the image is not really that difficult. All i find is 3rd party dll's. Are barcodes proprietary information? I would like the user to take their phone and use it like a barcode reader on any product and have my application grab that barcode information and put it in a database or file.
I have seen references to several different barcode types.

At the very least, I should think I could reverse engineer barcodes. I should be able to grab a barcode and then break down the lines into the corresponding numbers or digital information. To date I have not found any reasonably priced list of barcodes in a dll.

As a last resort, I am thinking of creating my own recognition program using OCR. I would then be able to read model number, serial number, the ups number if it is listed, and then have the user enter a descriptive name, say HP LJ 9400 color printer.

Tags have really changed. I would prefer tags vb.net C#.net