Crowd Sourcing Broken QR Codes
humanqr.com
humanqr.com
Interestingly enough, printed QR codes physically degrading as described in the article is actual bit rot, albeit a form often overlooked.
Fixed that for you. If you are using free stuff that you google-searched, then you're the product.
It sadly requires a lot of vigilance not to fall for these "petty deceptions".
Because it makes the QR code simpler (less "pixels") and therefore more robust. Given the same physical size, scratches affect it less, and a phone can read it from further away. You want to avoid long links in QR codes whenever possible.
The other thing is analytics, of course. You can generate 10 different small QR codes that lead to the same long URL, to find out where they're getting scanned, so you know which locations are popular and worthwhile and which ones are not.
And maybe don't criticize restaurant owners for being technically incompetent? I'm sure they would find you just as incompetent at cooking at scale.
Most QR code menus are entirely managed by just one company that is effectively a monopoly. It's not the restaurant staff making these terrible, it's the digital services provider.
Basically, we put data into QR codes the same as hard drives. Why then are there so few data recovery tools for QR codes?
If a cat shows up on your doorstep and now you got to figure out who owns the cat because you become concerned about it over time, what do you do if you can't scan the QR code on its collar?
The point is that in general, QR code content is less important than hard drive content. And that (the low demand) is the simple explanation to why there aren't as many tools for recovery.
I'd like to find a way to repair QR codes through software. However, that begins with collecting a bunch of broken and corrupted QR codes people stumble across and fixing them up by hand. This will help spot patterns in how they fail. So please help out by submitting your QR code that doesn't scan. Please don't create QR codes that don't scan just to submit them. Thank you! In the past I have fixed one QR code by hand and it is shown at the link.
Seems that the solution is to add more redundancy (and stop covering the center pixels with an icon). The codes are designed to be self-correcting if the damage is slight enough or more redundancy is added.
* https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/02/why-are-qr-codes-with-capit...
I hear you, and at the same time we're solving the wrong end of that pipeline, in my opinion. Almost every QR code I have ever seen in my life either points to bit.ly or some other link-shortener or marketing tracker domain which I would put good money will be dead way before the QR code's ink deteriorates
I don't mean that QR is a terrible standard, but at least until we can get URL forms that are on the whole less than 128 characters, I wish they had met the world where it is. I believe the http2 compression scheme comes with dedicated dictionary slots for header strings that they know are going to appear, so QR would have benefited from the same (e.g. http/https taking less than 4/5 bytes, :// less than 3)
Then again, having thought further about this, I guess Marketing's Razor is the most likely explanation: it wasn't a technical reason they're using bit.ly, it's for those sweet engagement metrics
Repairing the metadata parts & iterating over each of the version number should make the overwhelming majority of broken QR codes usable again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code#/media/File:QR_Code_St...
The other 70% is dedicated to "data", on which the Reed-Solomon-coding is applied. If your QR code is absolutely stuffed to its limit (about 2kb data), you can still destroy up to 51% of the image before the Reed-Solomon coding will start to fail at 30% redundancy.
Most codes only store a few hundred bytes of data, so you can afford to destroy a lot more before the payload is also destroyed.
I'd expect the minimal-viable QR code for a 100 character URI can be very degraded.
In practice, I mostly I find that the corners are the most finicky part. However, that is just my current opinion.
Comprehending what you read could help a lot, too.
The output data generally isn't repeated even a single time in full, let alone "lots of times". That's what error correction keys are for.
The fact that you can stick a logo in the middle doesn't have much to do with anything. I can (and many publishers have!) put a bunch of color pictures in the middle of a book, it doesn't mean the data in the book is repeated.
Show: https://qrshow.nyc/retrospective.html Related: https://bsky.app/profile/sri.xyz/post/3llnpa3tvqs2u
it was extremely fun organizing that QR Show. it's actually very fun organizing events/jams in general (I'm also thinking of https://wambamjam.recurse.com/ ) -- you put out an invite, get it to interesting people, and then step back. (and, like, get snacks).
that QR Show was truly a success because of people like you who brought original works -- a lot of these pieces were made in the last weeks! and days! leading to it. it was just astonishing to see.
I've shared with some friends that I'd be afraid to repeat that show because it went so well (like - should there be a yearly? qr show??). I'm still mulling this over.
thanks again!
Consider reading up on https://www.nayuki.io/page/creating-a-qr-code-step-by-step
And I highly recommend QRazyBox for manual painting with automatic decoding: https://merri.cx/qrazybox/ , https://github.com/Merricx/qrazybox
> that begins with collecting a bunch of broken and corrupted QR codes
Some ideas to consider: http://datagenetics.com/blog/november12013/index.html
That being said, I believe bar codes have the UPC number below it in case the code itself is damaged. Could QR codes have a similar textual encoding to identify them? And would that even fit legibly in the square?
[1] - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-life-hacks/pri...
With that in mind, there's nothing preventing you from putting the encoded text of a QR code below it. I have a QR code in my living room that guests can scan to connect to the Wi-Fi, and I put the SSID and password below the QR code on the same page. It's not the exact encoded string, but it serves the same purpose.
My first "real" job was working for an industrial automation company, where I did a lot of work on RFID and barcode readers. Barcodes (both 2D and 3D) are delightful things. There's an enormous variety out there, and you would never know unless you look closely, because they're so well-supported. I'd bet the barcode reader at your local grocery store can read at least 9 different encodings. Some are probably physically capable of reading QR (and other 3D codes like Aztec), but the firmware has been instructed to ignore them.
In all barcodes I'm aware of, that Z axis only has one bit of resolution (i.e. black or white, 1 or 0). If you had an encoding with more colors, you'd be increasing the resolution of that axis, but you wouldn't be adding a new axis per se.
Honestly, I also think 1D/2D would make more sense. But, 2D/3D is the nomenclature I saw being used among industry professionals on both the marketing and engineering sides.
AI is getting pretty good at depth estimation, and some phones even ship with LIDAR, so I think it should be feasible to correct for these automatically. Especially if you can get pictures from multiple angles.