Hand Drawn QR Codes (2025) | Hacker News Reader

Hand Drawn QR Codes (2025)

sethmlarson.dev

231 pointsjollyjerry45 comments

From the update: "Why are QR Codes with capital letters smaller than QR codes with lower-case letters?" https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/02/why-are-qr-codes-with-capit... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43149077)

I feel like Meshtag[1] was built for exactly this. The trick is that the symbol doesn't encode the link the way a QR code does -- it just references one on their server, so the drawing can be loose and imperfect and still resolve. The flipside is of course that if Meshtag ever shuts down, every tag in the world goes dead.

[1] http://www.meshtag.com

This is a unique approach, I’ve never heard of this. Shame it seems to be not downloadable in my region.

That's the same as MS Tag (dead). Anything which involves an online lookup is always going to suffer from a single-point-of-failure.

QR Codes work even if the publisher shuts down.

> (besides micro QR codes)

In case anyone else is interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rectangular_Micro_QR_Code

Rectangular Micro QR Codes are not ordinary Micro QR Codes.

this makes me wonder if there is an `infinite` version of QR Code that can be streamed from a printer (well, I guess things can be chunked).

QR codes generally want a marker on all four corners, so streaming one infinitely would mean that some of them would never be printed. You also need a certain amount of whitespace around a QR code so you can't just smush them together to make it looks like one infinite code. You might be able to make an infinite barcode though

Interesting connections with motion jpeg, animated gif and RFB (Remote Frame Buffer as used by VNC). The latter has me particularly curious, though all of them seem like mad hacks in search of faint excuses. Imagining a bi-directional link, still though, without any idea of WHY beyond "Because it was there".

No, I don't think that's it! That's a "Rectangular Micro QR Code".

I think it's this: https://www.qrcode.com/en/codes/microqr.html

If someone needs a gift idea:

I used something like this on a large sheet and cut it into pieces for a puzzle gift to a website where people left comments. Nowadays even easier to generate nice temporary websites for such things.

I’m picturing an acrylic version of it, or even some other fancier material.

The starter kit: a 21×21 board, with three 8×8 finder patterns, two 1×5 timing patterns, and 120 white and 119 black modules.

The Version 2 expansion pack includes a 25×25 board, two 1×4 timing patterns, one 5×5 alignment pattern, 76 white modules and 75 black modules.

And so on.

(I dunno about the desired ratio of individual black and white modules. I gather the general idea is to balance black and white, but does that include or exclude the fixed parts, where black is somewhat more common? Finder pattern is 33∶31 black∶white, alignment pattern is 17∶8, 1×5 timing pattern is 3∶2, 1×4 timing pattern is 2∶2.)

This is cool but I sort of hoped they were going to encode it and calculate the pattern by hand. I wonder how long that would take.

I saw similar engraved and then inked onto wooden boards at a restaurant, sadly, despite the error handling, 3 out of 4 I tried were not scannable, the 1 I did manage to scan to me to a reviews site for the restaurant (where a lot of reviews said they struggled to make the QR work - likely not the feedback the restaurant wanted)! I guess it kept me entertained whilst waiting for the bill.

There was a tweet a while back where I guy was riding a train in China and took a photo of the QR code for his seat. He mentioned that you can use the QR code to order food and drinks delivered directly to you.

About 5 minutes later there was another tweet from him where:

- someone saw the original tweet (Guy 2)

- scanned the QR code

- ordered the OP a drink

- added a note to the order saying it was from Guy 2

Always loved this story.

A cautionary tale if your QR Code® is a ticket for the big show, or opens up your HIPAA portal somewhere

QR Code® is [sic] registered trademark of DENSO WAVE INCORPORATED.

>QR Code®

|| cries into genericized Kleenex™ ||

yea - as nice as they can look, many scanners expect very high contrast and a clear, unbroken bright border around the whole thing (many stylized ones I see lack a border). lacking either will mean many failures.

I hand drew this on a whiteboard. It was a lot more work than I anticipated.

http://lars.nocrew.org/tmp/qr.png

By the way, I also coded a QR symbol generator in PDP-10 assembly language.

https://github.com/PDP-10/its/blob/master/src/lars/qrcode.8

> Note that a lovely reader informed me shortly after publication that indeed I can include my full domain name in a version 1 QR code by using all capital letters instead of lowercase. TIL that the "alphanumeric" character set for QR codes actually contains symbols for URLs like : and /.

This is a nice trick worth remembering. I have used it myself in the past. Handy not just for creating ultra small QR codes, but also for getting as much data as possible into the limits of the largest QR codes.

I've really enjoyed reading the Grid World piece linked at the bottom of the post: https://alex.miller.garden/grid-world/

That’s fun. I also love QR codes so I created https://qr-mailbox.com it gives u a we based inbox which just a unique string that lets you receive messages. I thought since Covid qrs have become a thing and ppl know how to scan and message

Anyone else scan their random junk that has QR codes to see where it goes? I've found a fair number of stuff has codes that do nothing. Bought an extra garage door opener remote, qr code on it does nothing. Got some SwitchBot gear, qr codes do absolutely nothing.

QR codes, like other barcodes, store information. They never "do" anything.

Or are you saying the ones you found failed to checksum?

QR codes were invented for inventorying and labeling. Sending links to your phone is a side effect.

No. They were invented for whatever reason and then the ability to be a link a phone can scan became their primary function when everyone on Earth started carrying phones. Pokemon cards have QR codes - every kid scans them, do you think they think whatever you do? I had a startup in 2012 that extensively used QR codes to make a game kinda like Pokémon Go and various "Scan to Win" games (I had in 3 bars and were scanned 50k times in their 1st month in a town of 12k people) I over invested in the local area and I ultimately failed bc of a handful of Boomers that literally believed smartphones were a "fad" and convinced several organizations to spend their marketing budgets on literally the newspaper and convinced several organizations to back pedal their investment and cancel deals already made. This post and all these comments proves most people still have no idea what a QR code actually is - none should ever be made that can't be changed at will later 1st off - they should also all be AR codes - bc a smartphone just needs to look at them with the camera open and you can have any graphic you start want start playing as they look at it without needing to scan. They are the easiest link in reality to the digital world - nothing has come of them bc people severely lack imagination.

AR codes does not seem to be that seamless, but I am a Boomer by heart.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARToolKit

The real reason nothing has been done with AR - bc it could easily function exactly as I said industry wide - is bc the people that make our phones do not want us engaging more with our actual reality, they don't want our phones to be a tool we use to see the world - they just want our eyes glued to the screens. They profit off our attention, so they keep it for money - much of the world sucks for exactly such reasons.

So, know that it may not be that seamless but I've experienced practically seamless AR, by simply opening an app camera, instead my default camera and I was able to do that to "blow peoples minds" back in 2012 - nobody had seen Pokémon Go yet and we showing them animated characters running around the actual room.

If a phone can automatically scan a QR code - which virtually all of them do, there is no reason it can't scan an AR tag built into the QR code by default also - not like a "real" reason.

I'll look into it later but I'm assuming its a bunch of excuses of the type corpos typically run with when they dont intend to do something - I dont really believe there is a patent they wouldn't infringe to keep our attention on lock - the AR tech existed 15 years ago and, just like Pokémon Go, its actually really cool stuff and has tons of very real applications that we haven't even skimmed the surface of yet.

Everyone isnt wearing smart glasses yet, but they are here for real now - ideally everything on earth is AR tagged or equivalent (there are several ways to do this now actually, tagless ways even) before we all have those glasses on - bc it will 100% certainly become so after that shift transpires.

The very fact that you even looked into AR makes you a better Boomer in my book - I'm sure a lot of Boomers on HN are like you, I will consider that more in the future when commenting here.

I hope you have a great day.

Sry for the book - I think you made me feel a little guilty, which is interesting.

They likely encode not URLs for the public, but internal identifiers that are only useful internally.

I used to in the mid 2000s but they kinda lost their magic for me at some point. They briefly regained the magic when I realized I could encode arbitrary text and make my own, but then I had so much trouble scanning the giant QR code I made (from printer paper) that the magic was gone again.

>qr code on it does nothing

It's like in the 2000s when you opened an .exe and nothing seemed to happen ... bad news.

I work in hardware manufacturing. Our PCBs have QR codes both on the silkscreen and on stickers, but they don't encode websites. Rather, they are part numbers and serial/lot numbers for traceability and to assist manufacturing/inventory. Unless you know our (and our upstream manufacturers') specific patterns, they'll be irrelevant to you.

I once sent a letter to a friend with a hand-written QR Code whose content was the typed letter.

It's cool for the receiver, but tedious for the sender (but it's a good way to help with difficult to read cursive).

2024 video from Veritasium on QR codes:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5ebcowAJD8

Ah, I did just that this weekend.

Well... it wasn't QR-code but rather artoolkit markers. Let's just say I'll keep on printing them for a bit.

I remember retracing QR codes on graph paper to pass time in grade 12 physics, this was back in 2013/2014.

This is cool, will try it

thats fun I would definitely scan this rather than a generated one

Then again, writing the url by hand and using OCR built into the camera app would probably be more practical and user friendly for everyone involved. Although for sure not as fun.

One time I tried to understand the QR algorithm and I didn't understand it at all despite trying multiple times.

Maybe I can try again with the help of LLMs. Hmm not a bad idea

I found this page very helpful in understanding each step of the QR code creation process. I can't say I recall it all but it would be possible to turn this into a small booklet, I guess.

https://typefully.com/DanHollick/qr-codes-T7tLlNi

Here's a HN discussion from 2022 about it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32837565

Nice! I also found this page very helpful:

https://www.nayuki.io/page/creating-a-qr-code-step-by-step

This is an interactive guide that will break down the process for your specific QR-code.

That's the best explanation I've seen - thanks for sharing!

There is also a nice Veritasium video about it, if you prefer that: https://youtu.be/w5ebcowAJD8

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