Show HN: QR Pixel encodes pixel art in QR codes.

The immediate feature that comes to mind is to be able to rotate the canvas that we're drawing on. I noticed that your logo (which is awesome) is actually in a different orientation than the drawing space.

Very nice, this is very similar to an idea I had kicking around for QR codes. I was looking to smash a bitmap or pixel art into it and start adding extra characters into the URL to minimize the error rate, trying to find the closest unmodified QR code. Then just route that URL or create a rewrite rule to display the page you want.

There's a possibility that a good code could be converged on but if the crypto is good enough it should be difficult. I haven't done any research at all though, I could be way off base.

Your interface requires a 3-button mouse, which anyone on a Mac is not likely to have (especially on a laptop). Yes, you can get a right click by doing a two-finger tap, but that's pretty clumsy, and you can't draw with it because that turns into scrolling.

You should probably just let people click on black, white, or grey buttons to select the current color.

Why doesn't it work on IE9?

This is a different method than using error correction that allows for more usable area (see details in other threads.)

It still leaves 7% of the ECC intact so you can further modify the code after it is generated. I had to modify a few pixels still to embed another QR code inside a QR code (and have both scan!)

http://designerqrcodes.wordpress.com/designer-qr-code-art-ga...

Yikes... that is quite high on the todo list (add selector boxes for a "pen" to draw with) but unfortunately it didn't make it for this release.

Also, unfortunately makes re-drawing gray pixels (middle-click) impossible.

Yes, an API or some easier features to do multiple URLs may come at some point.

This is a bit different from abusing the error correction as presented elsewhere - this actually encodes the image as data (padding actually) into the QR code so you get a larger area to use for the image and the code is still robust to damage.

All readers that I have tested so far work fine with this method, however it is a tiny bit outside the official QR code spec.

Thanks for trying it out!

Right now this generates a QR code that is almost completely compliant with the QR code spec and should work with every QR code reader. Adding images would start to rely on the error correction which is set to Low for maximum image space so the QR code wouldn't be as robust.

Also, I didn't want to get into uploading images/crop issues/resizing and the UI for that just yet as I am just working on this in my limited spare time, but this feature may come in a future version.

Yes, this encodes the actual image into the QR code data, with error correction intact. This allows for a larger image area and you still get the benefits of error correction.

There is a padding section between the data (roughly encoded in the right side) and the error correction (left side.) Most QR encoding methods make the padding section as small as possible to get the best printable result and smallest QR code. This makes the padding huge, thus the limit on URL length and automatic URL shortening, and uses these padding bits to encode the image.

Of course it is a bit outside the spec doing it in this way, but it has worked with every reader I've tested so far as they don't verify the padding bits.

Yes, you can use the resulting image for anything with no restriction. I don't care if you take out the little qrpixel blurb or want to modify it further.

Really I am just looking to introduce a different method of encoding images in QR codes, to make 2d barcodes less ugly.