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QR codes can be a handy way to send a link or contact details without all that tedious mucking about with typing in a link, but they aren’t very useful without a smartphone to decode them. [Noel Friedrich] wondered if there was a way to do it by hand.
If it all seems a bit daunting at first, [Friedrich]’s write-up helps you work through copying a QR code to paper and then decoding it, as long as it’s version 1-5. Slashes in the template tell you where error correction has been applied to the code and you need to flip the bit back to what it was.
[Friedrich] then goes into some more details with a practical example of how the error correction works and how to exploit the ways QR codes are generated and read to make artistic QR codes. This even works to make human readable codes (without the worksheet), although the quality of the text still makes it somewhat challenging.
This isn’t the first time we’ve featured reading QR codes without a computer, but once you learn, maybe this QR code clock will be a bit more useful!
Thanks to [InstantArcade] for the tip via Discord!
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