Friday, 25 November 2011

Desktop QR Code Reader

What are QR Codes?:
A QR code is a lot like a barcode you see on most products. QR codes are a great way to share information like websites and contact info. They can be scanned using your camera equipped device and a proper QR code processing app (For Android, I use the Barcode Scanner App, and on iPhone I use QR Reader for iPhone.) Once the code is scanned and processed, it takes you directly to the URL on your device, or shows you whatever else was encoded in the QR code. I love the ease ability of QR codes, just a quick scan, and the content is on your device. For Example, there is a great plug-in for Google Chrome called QR-Code Tag (For Firefox there’s Mobile Barcode) which lets you generate a QR code for the site you are currently viewing. This is super handy if your reading an article, and need to take it on the go. So, what about reading a QR code from your phone to your desktop computer? Well, surprisingly that wasn’t as easy. I spent some time digging around the internet, and could not find a good cross-platform application for reading QR codes onto your desktop computer. The only thing I found that was somewhat close, was an AS3 library on the Spark Project community page called QRCodeReader. At that time, the only thing using the library was embedded on a web page… which isn’t the most ideal solution if your wanting to just scan something quickly. So, I took the initiative to implement the library into an Adobe AIR app that can be run on basically any system. I call it QRreader (clever name right?). Follow me on twitter for updates.

How to use QRreader:
1: Make sure you have a working webcam and Adobe AIR installed.
2: Download and install QRreader.
3: Get a scan-able QR code (generated on a device, or printed)
4: Hold up the QR code to your webcam. Make sure your webcam can see the entire code, and that your code is evenly lit.
5: If your webcam sees the code, the white brackets will turn red. Then you will hear a *beep* sound once the code has been read properly.

(Windows, Mac, Linux compatible.)
Adobe AIR is required to run QRreader. Download AIR

Features 1.3:
*Camera drop down list
*Open URLs Automatically
*Beep sound when code is scanned
*Save Preferences
*Open-Source

1 comment:

  1. The QR code to create your Facebook fan pages or e-mail distribution list. When the customer scans your QR code, take them to a site, they can register your e-mail communications, or as your Facebook page.

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