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This is more like an URL shortener than like a QR code.

A URL shortener that requires a proprietary app instead of a web browser.

and costs money, lest your shortened URL "expires"

> Unfortunately, and unlike a QR code, the data is not encoded in the drawing itself.

Obviously, there is data in the drawing. Just that data is a symbol which is resolved through some proprietary app, which maintains the association in a private database where it is subject to expiry and such.

Just some third party has to develop an independent app to open up access to the data in the drawing and use it outside of the original system.

There might not be enough data in the drawing for it to satsify the same use cases as QR codes.

For private labeling, it could be good enough.

For private labeling, though, I'd prefer something that just scans alphanumeric labels, and not some silly triangles. I don't want to rack my brain inventing a triangle code for my Lady Diana collectible #153 that is different from those which I tacked onto 1 through 152. :)

> Obviously, there is data in the drawing.

I know this, and one can think of it as the numbers encoded in a plain old EAN-13 barcode. But as with these barcodes, the numbers by themselves don't usually have any meaning, they are just the key of a key-value pair. In this case the key-value database is in the Meshtag servers.

Like you said, the "raw numbers" can still be useful for small-scale labeling, but once you are at the point where you're just using the drawing to record a simple ID, it may be just easier to write the ID alphanumerically and have the computer OCR it or even just type it by hand (with a checksum digit, this can be more practical and effective than having to deal with camera scanners - "oh where is that app again/where did I leave my phone again...").

there could be much more data if you did a scribble, and it could translate to some specific data that could be useful (to stop by a third party number or code that doesn't mean anything by itself. is only useful to promote the cloud or to represent large amounts of data)

> once the Meshtag service goes down or closes for good, all tags become impossible to read

That is my concern as well. Also, what problem does meshtag solve? Why wouldn't I just use QR codes? I mean meshtag is neat and all, but seems like a novetly to me.

Very true. And I steered away from squares due to the "swastika effect". Also because the information is slightly more dense with a system based on triangles - 6 bits at a given vertex versus 4 bits.

Ha, you got me for a second. The bits aren't "stored" inside the vertex, but in the segments: It would be like saying that the space between bits "{0,1} {0,1}" contains 2 bits of information, and that we could encode more compactly by disposing bits around a circle, hence maximizing the number of bits in the center space. So given a triangular/square grid, the number of traceable segments is what matters (and that's where the ink goes too.)

I agree that triangles look a lot better than squares (to the point that the "swastika effect" is indeed a problem, even though the drawings are generated by a human, and not randomly.) However, they are also very hard to draw properly.

To recover the QR code decentralization, have you tried to encode data inside your triangular grid? You would loose the "drawable" property (due to the size), but the result would still look more interesting than the pixel junk of QR codes (and you could enforce "connectivity" for aesthetic and error correction.)

'Maxicode' uses a hexagonal pattern to encode the data - it's probably how this idea would evolve if you wanted to store the data in the pattern itself:

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

> the data is not encoded in the drawing itself,

if that's true then it doesn't really solve anything. The other obvious issue is how people are going to remember complex shapes like that. What about using a combination of 3 basic shapes instead (triangle,square,circle).

Yet the idea is still quite interesting. The OP is definitely on something here.

I'm less worried about the requirement for an internet connection than I am about the single point of failure. When the centralised service goes down, all your tags are useless squiggles.

It's a pretty simple back-end - cheap and easy to run. I don't plan to take it down!

Sure, but you have to admit that history is littered with things like this where they still died anyway. Can you not see how people could have concerns over this?

(I've commented elsewhere on this page BTW; I don't think the fact these are valid concerns makes it inherently bad ...)

I suppose you could rework this to actually encode the message in the shape much like a qr code. You could do it by having the first 9 characters be done by just moving around the 3 sides of the triangle, then the next set would have a dot in the middle, and then the next set would have a line through the middle, etc. You could then write that line-by-line or in a spiral or something.

Neat to think about though. And, unlike QR codes they look sufficiently sci-fi.

That is a huge problem. A better solution would have been an app which takes a url and shows a sketch of triangles or squares which the user can then write out. Such an app could work offline as well.

How many shapes would you need to draw to encode even basic data like an 64 bit string of text?

Serious question...would it be something that a person could sketch out quickly by hand? Or end up being a massive diagram?

I've been reading the book "Code" where they start getting into the combinatorics side of things, but still relatively new to it.

We already have such a system, it's called letters and numbers..