i love seeing creative qr code designs, so i made this guide explaining what tricks you can (and can't!) do with qr codes while still keeping them very much readable
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@rebane2001 I organize dance events in the street and I want people to be able to scan even from a long distance while walking, so I need the lowest density QRCode as possible.
If the qrcode contains 4k of data, the phone takes too long to scan, you need to really stay still, etc. But if your reduce to the bare minimum, then, you can have a very low density qrcode.And the latest trick I've learned is that if you use capital letters only (and some special characters ) in a URL, the qrcode gets less dense as well.
So, HTTP://MY.LINK/1234 is more scannable than http://my.link/1234
@rebane2001 I made a URL shortener + QRCode generator to get the most scannable QRCode, and most of it, it's open source because MY GOD IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND A PROVIDER THAT IS NOT ENSHITTIFIED TO THE BRIM.
https://github.com/dolanor/qure
Documentation is inexistent, but I'm here if you have questions, and if people are interested, I could add a README (LOL).
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i love seeing creative qr code designs, so i made this guide explaining what tricks you can (and can't!) do with qr codes while still keeping them very much readable
have fun and make cool stuff!!
@rebane2001 What I keep wondering is if there isn't some way to render the QR code such that the reader does not expect there to be bits in the middle, i.e. you're not losing any data by covering them up.
...which would mean that you could make the center image an arbitrarily large percentage of the total image size (i.e. the actual QR code bits would be in an arbitrarily thin layer wrapped around that center image).
The answer is probably "no, because format design", but I still wonder.
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i love seeing creative qr code designs, so i made this guide explaining what tricks you can (and can't!) do with qr codes while still keeping them very much readable
have fun and make cool stuff!!
@rebane2001 Thanks for the nice write-up! QR code tomfoolery arguably deserves way more attention than it gets today.
In my personal testing, I've found that fully preserved timing strips are not that important if the rectangle distortion is small. By shrinking the dots and filling the resulting gaps with a picture, you can get *very* clean looking results.
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i love seeing creative qr code designs, so i made this guide explaining what tricks you can (and can't!) do with qr codes while still keeping them very much readable
have fun and make cool stuff!!
@rebane2001 One important thing: People need to be able to recognize the code as QR code. I'm really sure that codes like these will reduce the amount of scans
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@rebane2001 @cR0w Slide #3 made me think: if you know the radius of the curved object you should be able to print a QR code that still reads? At least from a specific angle if, for instance, pixel aren’t drawn linearly any longer
@rebane2001@infosec.exchange @sid77@infosec.exchange @cR0w@infosec.exchange IF you don't try the other tricks, then you can curve it just enough that the "calculated center" of it is straight, but visually it's curved a decent amount
and also yeah you can put it onto the curved surface w anti-curved projection, which would not have many angles it'd work from i think (and ofc has to all ve visible at the same time)
hmm, i wonder how wild you could get combining the two lol
compensated projection AND visual curve could probably work both for helping readability, and also otherwise, to make a barely readable but very curved code -
@rebane2001@infosec.exchange @sid77@infosec.exchange @cR0w@infosec.exchange IF you don't try the other tricks, then you can curve it just enough that the "calculated center" of it is straight, but visually it's curved a decent amount
and also yeah you can put it onto the curved surface w anti-curved projection, which would not have many angles it'd work from i think (and ofc has to all ve visible at the same time)
hmm, i wonder how wild you could get combining the two lol
compensated projection AND visual curve could probably work both for helping readability, and also otherwise, to make a barely readable but very curved code@6 @rebane2001 @cR0w We need a new XKCD on map^wQR codes projections
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@xanna error correction, for the purposes of these tricks it is the same as data
@rebane2001 thank you
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i love seeing creative qr code designs, so i made this guide explaining what tricks you can (and can't!) do with qr codes while still keeping them very much readable
have fun and make cool stuff!!
@rebane2001
a scarf? really?
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i love seeing creative qr code designs, so i made this guide explaining what tricks you can (and can't!) do with qr codes while still keeping them very much readable
have fun and make cool stuff!!
@rebane2001 here I was thinking I understood qr codes, what do mean you only need 30%?? But- I- I thought it’s like a deck of cards with like too many possiblties to be realistically found in a lifetime… so wouldn’t that mean that if we only look at 30% of it, it could happen that it has the same 30% as another code? Like if I only look at the top two cards it’s totally possible to get ace heart and ace spade again with the rest still totally jumbled..
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i love seeing creative qr code designs, so i made this guide explaining what tricks you can (and can't!) do with qr codes while still keeping them very much readable
have fun and make cool stuff!!
@rebane2001 what about this?
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i love seeing creative qr code designs, so i made this guide explaining what tricks you can (and can't!) do with qr codes while still keeping them very much readable
have fun and make cool stuff!!
@rebane2001
I can now imagine a qrcode that turns its message to "counterfeit" when photocopied.There already exist qrcodes that read different when scanned from left or right: https://mstdn.social/@hacknorris/116292318612844409 https://dualqrcode.com/about
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@rebane2001
I can now imagine a qrcode that turns its message to "counterfeit" when photocopied.There already exist qrcodes that read different when scanned from left or right: https://mstdn.social/@hacknorris/116292318612844409 https://dualqrcode.com/about
@xdej yup
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i love seeing creative qr code designs, so i made this guide explaining what tricks you can (and can't!) do with qr codes while still keeping them very much readable
have fun and make cool stuff!!
this is super cool
Question, possibly silly:
can you make a QR code that has two or more codes and the code your device sees depends on what angle you are relative to the code ?
sort of like color shift ink used in currency ? -
@rebane2001 I organize dance events in the street and I want people to be able to scan even from a long distance while walking, so I need the lowest density QRCode as possible.
If the qrcode contains 4k of data, the phone takes too long to scan, you need to really stay still, etc. But if your reduce to the bare minimum, then, you can have a very low density qrcode.And the latest trick I've learned is that if you use capital letters only (and some special characters ) in a URL, the qrcode gets less dense as well.
So, HTTP://MY.LINK/1234 is more scannable than http://my.link/1234
@dolanor I was curious about the capital letters thing so I looked in to it and TIL about alphanumeric mode.
I'm actually working on a project right now that will often be displaying QR codes on low-res screens so this is great timing to learn.
For anyone else who sees this thread and gets interested, here's a post that explains the technical reasons for this behavior:
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i love seeing creative qr code designs, so i made this guide explaining what tricks you can (and can't!) do with qr codes while still keeping them very much readable
have fun and make cool stuff!!
@rebane2001 I used a gif'ed QR to set up a joke a few slides later in this deck - https://aps-i.chibatech.dev/lectures/agents-in-economics/#/title-slide
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i love seeing creative qr code designs, so i made this guide explaining what tricks you can (and can't!) do with qr codes while still keeping them very much readable
have fun and make cool stuff!!
@rebane2001 the centre vs "rest of pixel" thing is insane and opens up some interesting drawing avenues! Also the non-affine transforms thing makes sense -- I guess if you were planning on sticking QR codes on a small-radius pole (bus stop etc) or lamppost, you could apply some sort of inverse pincushion effect on the y-axis to "undo" it when placed.
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i love seeing creative qr code designs, so i made this guide explaining what tricks you can (and can't!) do with qr codes while still keeping them very much readable
have fun and make cool stuff!!
@rebane2001 you also may like the "double-sided" qr-codes: https://altsoph.substack.com/p/double-sided-qr-code and the 3d QR dice: https://altsoph.substack.com/p/qr-dice
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i love seeing creative qr code designs, so i made this guide explaining what tricks you can (and can't!) do with qr codes while still keeping them very much readable
have fun and make cool stuff!!
@rebane2001 Actually, I once made an app where you can load an arbitrary image and then overlay a QR code on top of it and slide the code around and resize it and the app finds the orientation of the code so that the readability is least impaired - see example. Sorry but the blog post is in german and the video is offline (thanks, youtube):
https://elbosso.codeberg.page/interaktive_anwendung_zur_einbettung_qr_codes.html#content
I added the video to this post...Edit: corrected the hyperlink
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@rebane2001 here I was thinking I understood qr codes, what do mean you only need 30%?? But- I- I thought it’s like a deck of cards with like too many possiblties to be realistically found in a lifetime… so wouldn’t that mean that if we only look at 30% of it, it could happen that it has the same 30% as another code? Like if I only look at the top two cards it’s totally possible to get ace heart and ace spade again with the rest still totally jumbled..
@JoeMama it's the other way around. 30% is the amount you can garble.
@rebane2001 -
i love seeing creative qr code designs, so i made this guide explaining what tricks you can (and can't!) do with qr codes while still keeping them very much readable
have fun and make cool stuff!!
@rebane2001 Very cool guide! I especially like how you built it up.
To end up with the same principle that lies behind my qr code generator https://pictureqrcode.com to just have the small dots behind any image.
