[HN Gopher] Show HN: I open sourced the QR designer from my fail...
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Show HN: I open sourced the QR designer from my failed startup
My designer is somewhat special, if I do say so myself, as it
allows you to put arbitrary designs in the middle area of the QR
while still being totally scannable.
Author : koch
Score : 658 points
Date : 2023-05-30 17:53 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| koch wrote:
| If anyone is still hanging out in this thread I just fixed images
| so they work locally now
|
| https://github.com/kochrt/qr-designer/commit/3ad0a4edea33d17...
|
| http://robko.ch/qr-designer/
| jmull3n wrote:
| This is really good, I wish I saw it before I built something
| similar. Mine is server-side rendered at the edge. It allows any
| value but still has no where near the functionality as yours.
| https://github.com/jmcmullen/qr-kit
| Alifatisk wrote:
| It's done in Nuxt, cool!
|
| I have a huge interest in starting using Nuxt on my next web
| projects. Might even start earlier because of this.
|
| How does Nuxt handle the backend part? Any recommendations?
|
| I am used to how Rails does it by using ActiveRecord and it's
| flexible ORM.
| koch wrote:
| Nuxt and the Nuxt team are working on some incredible things in
| my opinion. I made this using Nuxt 2 which uses Vue 2, I would
| start with Nuxt 3 [0] which uses Vue 3 and has made a lot of
| improvements built upon a bunch of other open source libraries
| they maintain [1]. They essentially have a 'you can deploy this
| anywhere' model, from traditional node environments to edge
| runtimes like cloudflare workers.
|
| The backend part was pretty straightforward for nuxt 2 because
| I could just use express. I think it's a bit different (maybe
| even simpler?!) for nuxt 3 [2].
|
| I haven't checked recently so I'm not too sure what kind of ORM
| options they have available. I suspect there would be database
| plugins regardless, if it's not baked into Nuxt.
|
| [0] nuxt.com
|
| [1] https://unjs.io/
|
| [2] https://nuxt.com/docs/guide/directory-structure/server
| TimLeland wrote:
| Very cool could you share what features people wanted from QR
| codes? I'm looking into ways to improve https://t.ly/qr-code-
| generator
| phoenixreader wrote:
| Why did your startup fail?
| luuuzeta wrote:
| The OP explains it here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36130625
| steventey wrote:
| Very cool stuff, thanks for open-sourcing this! Might incorporate
| it into Dub , an open-source link management tool that I'm
| building: https://github.com/steven-tey/dub
| naedish wrote:
| Very cool - I used a website with a custom qr code generator [1]
| and some hacky RPA tool about 8 years ago to create custom QR
| codes for each guest at our wedding. My wife created a wedding
| logo and we had that in the middle of our QR code - it worked
| well. The QR code was a personalised URL for each guest's rsvp
| which used a URL shortener [2] installed on our wedding domain
| (hosted on a free micro AWS instance).
|
| Was a fun way to do my part for our wedding planning.
|
| [1] https://www.unitag.io/qrcode [2] https://yourls.org/
| unholiness wrote:
| > Compared to other QR designs, this does not take advantage of
| error correction that QR codes use, but rather deterministically
| turns some pixels in the code pattern on or off without affecting
| what the QR code is pointing to.
|
| Can someone explain how this is done? Is it adding characters to
| the URL that somehow browsers will ignore?
| tyingq wrote:
| I assume there's a bit more to it, but QR codes inherently
| support a "mask" that tells the scanner parts of the image to
| ignore. So you could do at least some of that with the mask.
| It's not real flexible, so there's perhaps other tricks also.
| bmicraft wrote:
| I was under the assumption that the mask was just a short
| static pattern XORd over the data?
| CalebJohn wrote:
| It is, the QR code spec details a few specific masks that
| are available. The one which produces the best QR code is
| chosen (best in this case means most clear/easiest for a
| scanner to read. So, no large blocks of white or black).
|
| Wikipedia has a pretty good visual of this.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code#Encoding
| brundolf wrote:
| This is so cool. I think I've already got a project idea I can
| use this for
| karolist wrote:
| What product was your startup building, how did having a fancy QR
| designer benefited your product? Was QR designer the product? Why
| did it fail and what are your plans next?
| koch wrote:
| Great questions!
|
| Basically I was working on a link shortener. However in
| addition to a link shortener that took you to another page, I
| wanted users to be able to create a mini website that could
| host apps. Like you could create a small page that had photos
| of your business and a menu/ordering app and an "IM with staff"
| app etc.
|
| The fancy generator was kind of an added bonus, I always
| thought the QR codes I'd see around were so dull and
| unidentifiable! There was very little in traditional QR codes
| themselves to make them "human-scannable", so to speak. A QR
| codes is essentially a sign; it should have some information in
| it that you, a person, can parse. A little logo in the middle
| is weak at best.
|
| It failed because I didn't sell it. I needed to sell it. I
| needed to talk to people. I needed to like cold call people,
| restaurant owners without websites. Annnnd I always came up
| with an excuse not to.
|
| As far as next plans, I'm working on something else these days
| - https://markwhen.com
| yieldcrv wrote:
| build it and they wont come
| myguestacc wrote:
| markwhen.com looks neat! What tech did you use to make the
| editor?
| koch wrote:
| Codemirror & vue. Chances are if you're using a code editor
| in a web app it's either Microsoft's Monaco [0] or
| CodeMirror [1], which is maintained by Marijn Haverbeke
|
| [0] https://github.com/microsoft/monaco-editor
|
| [1] https://codemirror.net/
| progx wrote:
| "I needed to talk to people. I needed to like cold call
| people, restaurant owners without websites. Annnnd I always
| came up with an excuse not to."
|
| If this is something you absolutely not wanna do, then not do
| it! Look for somebody who can sell, but almost impossible to
| find somebody.
|
| Better built something, that you don't have to sell at the
| way you don't like. Speaking from own experience. This will
| be hard enough, but cold calls are nealry impossible for a
| one man show, especially with a low price product.
| luuuzeta wrote:
| > https://markwhen.com
|
| Wow this is also awesome! Some programmers are truly creative
| people haha
| koch wrote:
| Thank you!
| squokko wrote:
| Not even cold call. Cold pitch. Find restaurants with shite
| websites. Build them better ones. Walk in and show the QR
| code to the owner. Say you've built a better website for the
| restaurant. Have him scan it and see his restaurant much
| better presented, on his own phone. Say the first 3 months
| are free and then $200 a month.
| davidktr wrote:
| >markwhen
|
| you are building crazy cool stuff
| koch wrote:
| Thank you!
| rkuodys wrote:
| https://markwhen.com - very cool. however, If I could share
| with you, I would see the value in following case: if I could
| connect my calendar(s) to it and see what is going on and
| overlay it with the data here in comment. Use case is both -
| for retrospective and for planning (for example if you're
| preparing the meeting and don't want to share content just
| yet, or jotting something for time in-between meeting what to
| do, etc)
| qingcharles wrote:
| Looks great. I'll be keeping an eye on it.
| bombcar wrote:
| This sounds interesting and if you're really "giving up" on
| the idea, perhaps you could "open source" everything. People
| could take it and make a "restaurant website in a box" that
| could deploy directly to GitHub pages, even.
| dylan604 wrote:
| hasn't UberEats, DoorDash and their ilk already done all of
| this all while being super helpful to the point the
| restaurants were totally unawares it had been done?
| bombcar wrote:
| They've helped in some cases but in others it's entirely
| confusing (or nonexistent).
| paledot wrote:
| Restaurant owners around here seem acutely aware that
| they're grabbing 30% of their revenue and actively
| routing customers away from the restauranteurs' own
| sites. Yes, there is room for competition.
| rapnie wrote:
| I've noticed the same in the Netherlands anecdotally..
| delivery services hated with a vengeance, yet restaurant
| owners convicted to using them nonetheless. (There was
| also a TV documentary some time ago, but about The Fork,
| and how Amsterdam restaurants resented them).
| LtdJorge wrote:
| All restaurants hate TheFork. Same with Booking (which is
| from NL, coincidentally) and similar sites. There's no
| way to compete with them, and by being an aggregator,
| they have massive benefits in discoverability. Customers
| are just going to open their page to search, instead of
| using their search engine, so you have to be on their
| site, but they are filthy pirates.
| Rastonbury wrote:
| It's a hard sale, restaurant owners are fickle and cheap, not
| the easiest to sell to
| mikeweiss wrote:
| For a good reason... Profit margins at most restaurants are
| razor thin.
| sho wrote:
| > It failed because I didn't sell it. I needed to sell it. I
| needed to talk to people. I needed to like cold call people
| [..] Annnnd I always came up with an excuse not to
|
| I can identify so hard with this it hurts...
| beezlewax wrote:
| If it failed because you didnt sell it then maybe sales isnt
| your strong point? Find a salescperson to work with seems an
| obvious solution to this problem
| siculars wrote:
| First, you did something. Nothing can take that away from
| you. So be proud of what you did. Next, you learned a
| valuable lesson that will come with you into your next
| projects. Learning to "sell" is absolutely critical for so
| much of life - not just tech startups.
|
| Finally, this is not the end. There will be more ideas and
| more opportunity. You're already on to the next thing. Keep
| moving forward. It's not how long or short the game is, or
| how quickly you move. It's how long you stay in the game.
| Keep playing the game.
| gpspake wrote:
| If you can nail the timeline thing, I'd pay. I think about
| this all the time and it seems like something that should
| exist. I'd kind of like to use it to look at life events like
| "what week was I on vacation when I was a kid." Google Photos
| is great for this but I'd like to add my own entries.
| koch wrote:
| I have similar thoughts, which is why I'm working on it!
| nudpiedo wrote:
| The tool is very cool, although at first sight it looks to me
| like the perfect side hustle rather than a startup... may I know
| what was your napkin business plan for such a startup?
|
| I guess you put a lot of love in the tool. Freeware, abandonware
| and open source is sort of a tragedy of the commons for the IT
| professionals (yes HN, I know there is a global benefit, just no
| one seems to talk about the cons).
| xfalcox wrote:
| The add image feature is not working for me.
| koch wrote:
| Fixed
|
| https://github.com/kochrt/qr-designer/commit/3ad0a4edea33d17...
| koch wrote:
| Ah sorry about that, I'm not surprised... I think I uploaded it
| to a server first but now that it's all shut down there is no
| server for it to be uploaded to.
|
| https://github.com/kochrt/qr-designer/blob/420adea59e617659f...
| didntknowya wrote:
| i have a lot of people unable to recognize QR codes as scannable.
| making it more picture-like would reduce usability?
| victor9000 wrote:
| Why not use the image to provide a better "scan me" visual?
| taubek wrote:
| I really like the tool. I used some similar desktop apps few
| years ago, but they missed the simplicity of your solution.
| Almost a 1000 GitHub stars within one day. Really impressive.
| willsmith72 wrote:
| This is really cool. If you fixed the image upload, removed the
| 25 character requirement (less would be fine), and made the link
| customisable in the site, I think you could have a really neat
| product/business. I'd definitely send it to my startup's founder,
| we're already using QR codes and these would be way nicer than a
| plain one.
| koch wrote:
| Did the images too
|
| https://github.com/kochrt/qr-designer/commit/3ad0a4edea33d17...
| koch wrote:
| I went ahead and got most of your requests in - except for the
| image uploading, but you can now edit the url and it can be 25
| characters or less [0]. The rest will be padded with spaces but
| browsers seem to handle that fine based on my 3 minutes of
| testing. Updated the live site too [1].
|
| [0] https://github.com/kochrt/qr-
| designer/commit/55d4de3f856828b...
|
| [1] https://robko.ch/qr-designer/
| willsmith72 wrote:
| Nice, looks great. Sharing it around, nice job
| TechTechTech wrote:
| Thanks for open sourcing this.
|
| Reminds me of halftone QR codes
| http://vecg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/Projects/SmartGeometry/halftone_QR/...
| lucb1e wrote:
| I've been looking for this for years but did not know the right
| keywords to search for. Saw an Anonymous/Guy Fawkes styled
| sticker on CCC in 2018 or something, on and off I've been
| looking for how it was made. Now I know.
| [deleted]
| nojs wrote:
| Semi related, one of the most useful functions of chatgpt
| I've found is describing something you don't know the word
| for. It's helped me find stuff many times that I would never
| have found otherwise just by knowing what to search for.
| fl0id wrote:
| thought that often also works with just a search
| e12e wrote:
| Nice! I also found a quick write-up - with a link to a js
| implementation:
|
| https://backdrifting.net/post/016_halftone_qr
|
| https://github.com/fangj/Halftone-QRCode-Generator
| ketzu wrote:
| Just a warning to users: light-on-dark QR codes can not be parsed
| by all QR code readers, even though they look nice.
| abwizz wrote:
| sounds ridicules, please share some evidence
| tantalor wrote:
| https://github.com/bennyguitar/BTCDonationViewController/iss.
| ..
|
| https://www.qrcode-monkey.com/6-reasons-why-your-qr-code-
| is-...
| krasin wrote:
| Very cool! Years ago, I was also inspired by
| https://research.swtch.com/qart
| 4rt wrote:
| I've been looking for that for quite a while, thanks for the
| link
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Such a lovely and easy to read webpage
| Prickle wrote:
| Man I really wish I had access to this functionality ~ 5 years
| ago.
|
| Thankyou for open sourcing this! Always nice to see stuff like
| this. I will definitely pass this onto some underclassmen.
| andrewxhonson wrote:
| Does the readme's last example have sections of one code embedded
| in the empty space between another code's sections? That's pretty
| cool.
| bmicraft wrote:
| I did not get the bottom one to scan on the last example with
| two different scanners. It might just be invalid/=.
| david422 wrote:
| > In order to maximize designer space, the url that the QR codes
| links to is expected to be exactly 25 characters long
|
| Seems like a cool QR code, but also limited for general use.
| codeflo wrote:
| I could imagine this being part of an offering that includes an
| appropriately customized URL shortener (or if necessary,
| lengthener).
| koch wrote:
| Yeah like the other replies said, it's meant to be part of a
| link shortener; or maybe you have a short domain that you can
| use short urls with. Like surprisingly enough I could fit a
| link to my github page in there as plaintext (although all
| caps)
| koch wrote:
| I went ahead and made it so you can put your own urls at 25
| characters or less [0], and updated the live site too [1].
|
| [0] https://github.com/kochrt/qr-
| designer/commit/55d4de3f856828b... [1] https://robko.ch/qr-
| designer/
| kevincox wrote:
| Definitely. I would love to be able to customize the design
| area and get matching amounts of data to be entered.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| For shorter URLs you could pad it with unused query strings
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(page generated 2023-05-31 23:02 UTC)