@@technologyclub6870 I'm using it to solve a CTF challenge.. we have to decode a QR code that has solid color polygons on top CTF in Computer Security (en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Capture_the_flag)
I don't ever comment on videos. But I have to thank you for this. This was awesome. I can imagine the time it took to create all of these graphics, and want to thank you for your efforts. This is exactly the kind of thing I love to find online.
@@leskerwint2607 because maybe there are people who find this useful and the guy who made the video used it's time for helping that people and making it easy to understand.
Dude I've been looking everywhere on youtube a video explaining how QR codes work, and they all say "How a QR code WORKS" but all they do is explain what they are and how to download an app to install it (aka bullshit title). Now that I've watched your video I can see why there are no videos explaining this shit, it's so complicated. Thank you so much for uploading this, I can see it's hard even for you to explain it. Also I'm subscribing.
I just saw a short program about the Japanese guy who developed the QR code but they didn't say anything about how it worked. Your use of an Excel spreadsheet was pure genius and actually made it understandable. Now I want to read the Wikipedia article to learn more details. Thanks for producing this video. It was both entertaining and informative.
I'm not sure why you stopped putting up videos, but this here is an absolute work of art! Thank you so much for giving us such a thorough video! Well done and hope to see more from you in the future.
Nice video. However it is much simpler and faster to find the characters in the ASCII table if you convert the block pattern direct to the octal values (i.e. no adding up is needed!). For example, your lower case "s" at 18m48s is the bit pattern 01_110_011 where I have separated the pattern into the 2 and 2/3 octal characters with underscores. With a few minutes practice you can just read that off as the octal number 163. Now look over to your ASCII table and there you see the octal number 163 next to the lower case "s". No sums required! There are only 7 octal patterns to remember and you can then translate any number of bits to octal or just do the mental adding up of the 4 plus 2 plus 1 bit values for each character in your head.
One way to make it easier is to start the “unmasking” in the length corner. That way you can know how long the text is and you don’t have to unmask the whole thing.
hey. I woke up with the obsessive idea to reverse engineer/decode a QR code. I couldn't thank you more for making this video, such a great amount of work, and purely explained. thank you very much
A bit (or 2 or 3 ...) complex for a tech illiterate like me, but I do know a bit about QR codes or know what one looks like and often wondered how they work. This well explained video on a complex technical topic gave me the sort of general idea of how they encode their information. That is all I wanted as a curious lay person. Thank you.
Thank you so much for this tutorial. I'd been searching for this info the whole day until I got to you and not only did you make black dots understandable, but I was laughing the entire time. Keep them coming! :)
There's one error in this video. When you apply the masking, the purple fixed patterns weren't skipped over. They were merely ignored. In other words, for this specific qr code, the grey lines should start from the first line (0th line), and then the third, the fifth (skipped cuz it's fixed pattern), and seventh and so forth.
It's about Finder patterns and timing patterns and orientation patterns. Then, byte tile shapes and layout pattern, and masks. Then there's error correction! Error control coding. BCH codes for bit error correction (format information only), Reed Solomon codes for symbol error correction.
fwiw you can decode letters without looking up the ascii chart. Ascii capital letters are (64 + letter's place in the alphabet), ascii lowercase are (64 + 32 + letter's place in the alphabet). For example 98 is ascii for "b" because 98 = 64 + 32 + 2, and b is the second letter of the alphabet
Thank you for taking the time to explain this to mere mortals. I never dreamed one could actually decode these things "by hand" as you say. The explanation of what QR codes contain makes them less annoying somehow and I would never have the patience to read the Wikipedia page on the subject. Please stop and smell the roses (or do something else outside) to treat yourself!
I think you made a mistake: When masking, the timing patterns are not skipped over but are simply ignored. If you'd look up the documentation you will find that the modules that need to be inverted are defined by simple formulas that take row and column coordinate as input. The one for vertical lines being: (row) mod 2 == 0.
5:34 I'm pretty sure that's wrong, the lines start from the top, where the first row is an even row. Check the wikipedia example image with the wikipedia url, where you can see that in the middle top section, the top line is inverted.
It's a method of data storage. If you could see what sectors look like magnetically on your hdd it also has a strange appearance. Computers aren't great with image recognition so we store data as simple for them as possible. What looks easy for us is tough for a computer and what is simple for a computer is tough for us. We aren't the same. Nothing to do with religion we just need a way to talk to them quickly. Our interface with machines is a huge limiting factor we are always trying to make it easier. We have a bandwidth limitation that is done by either scanning things or slowly punching stuff in with our fingers. Nowadays talking sometimes. It's all just way to store and talk to a machine it's nothing to worry about you are educating yourself on them though and that's good hopefully the fear of them has relaxed a bit and you understand more of how they work and what they do. It's just a piece of paper or sticker with the ability to help communicate with your computer to make lives easier. You are doing right though by investigating and learning about them.
I don't think you're supposed to ignore that row of timing patterns when you damasking the code. On my own attempt that has caused all the boxes above it to be the inversion of what they should be, also the example on wiki implies that its the first layer that is inverted.
I've seen a few vids about this, but this was by far and a way the best of those videos. Thank you. Just made one completely by scratch from this, and then compared it to one made online by qrstuff website. and they are similar! though theirs seemed slightly different at first, so i now realized why, I had my ascii wrong for one of the bytes. Thanks mate!
The first little bit, as you called it, is actually an encoding nibble, as it is half a byte. Along the same lines, two bytes is equal to a sandwich. Programmers are hungry people, so you will find a lot of hardware and software named after food.
I always thought a QR code had some internet magic in it and that something had to be activated for it to be read. Never realized it's basically just information written in another language.
Someone to have come up with this QR Code must be bored to death with his social life and had nothing better to do I guess, on top of this, however fewer friends he had, they must have got bored to death with his QR code talk in his local bar. I feel sorry for that guy. But thanks for cracking this stupid code
Thanks m8! you helped me decode the QR code on my homework so I can read the text of answers! Thanks Dud! I'm 11 Years Old Btw .-. Now no homework can beat meh! Or maybe even school work .-.
Thanks for sharing this knowledge with us. I have been looking for an understandable method for awhile. Your explanation is the easiest to follow. I will be trying it out on a code I found that I believe unlocks something special. Perhaps I will ask your opinion, as well. Thanks again.
Great stuff....... I especially enjoyed the definitions of the marks and coding types around the three corners. With the inverting of every other line, this tells me more about it. But I now see there are several ways of encoding those characters, and although I know the standard ASCII HEX codes for all letters and digits by heart, if I don't detect the proper encoding type first, the rest will be garbage. But very well done.
This is genius. Both your great video/explanation AND the elegant, amazing invention and logic of the QR code itself! Thank you sir. Nice work!:) danke from Germany!
Thanks for doing these videos! These are great. The Wikipedia articles never seemed enough to make these encodings clear to me. Could you do one on Micro QR or Mini QR? I've seen codes which only have one targeting square in one corner. How do those work?
Thanks for the detailed explanation. I will of course use an app to create qr codes, but i always wondered how it worked and now i learnt. By the way, how many did you spend to create that excel file? :)
Can anyone confirm that he did the demasking incorrectly at the top? The demasking process is based on an algorithm. The one he's doing is: ( i % 2 = 0 ) This means if the row is even if needs to be inverted. But he skips the finder pattern row and acts as if it doesn't exist. I'm pretty sure that has to be incorrect.
Great work on the graphic side, those took some time to create. You broke down the qr in a way I understand now. My reason for reading qr by hand was detailed at the 8 minute section adout over lay patterns, reading directions. Thank you for that. You lost me at 11 thru 13 minutes in video. I encourage all watching this to let it play,, it will come together for you by the end. If you want to understand qr investing 20 minutes here will save you 5 hours watching other videos that only tell what apk to download. This video tells details you can use and apply. Next video will you explain how files are hidden inside image files and how to decode them. FIBER0PTIC / FBR, The HUMBLE Guys, Napalm and Worship.
Finally *knowing that a Rick roll is gonna be next in my autoplay* *knowing a rickroll link even though it’s not the same one* *knowing a rickroll from a QR code even thought it’s not the same* Its all here
Very good video, but the yellow is not formatting crap! It is the extra parity bits of a complete BCH code for error correction, to protect the formatting information.
I love the video You made! It shows how to decode a qr code manually which is awesome. I however would like to see a more detailed video on this matter, if you are interested in doing that, I want to create my own QR code manually. One of your videos would explain much more than the ISO specification.. I want to learn how to create both M1-M4 and 1-40 manually. I also would love to create the error encoding manually. If you find the time, it would be awesome if ou could do a more detailed follow up so everybody could create a QR code on the go. (most people wn't, but lots of people would enjoy the challenge and be happy if it works.
+Matt Tycho Alright, looking for some references, here's what I've found: en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Reed%E2%80%93Solomon_codes_for_coders downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp-pdf-files/WHP031.pdf I'll look into these later to see if it's something I can understand and possibly make a video from.
This is a little late to ask, but how do custom QR codes work where they put an image in the middle of the QR code or use a circular shape? Are they just adding random dots around the outside to fit the shape or is that actual data? And are they just covering up the error correction information in the middle of the QR code which doesn't impact the functionality or just are they changing how the QR code data flows?
For QR codes with an image in the middle, it's possible thanks to a high level of error correction. Indeed, with the highest level you can technically recover as much as 30% of the code. So the image covers some data but leaves enough information to still have a readable QR code. For circular QR codes, I haven't personally encountered any before you asked but yes, it's probably just gibberish added to the outside, which makes these technically no longer QR codes since the ISO standards states that a 4-module wide area should be left empty all around the symbol. As for QR codes with non-square tiles (circles, rounded square, etc.), that's not an issue because the reader samples color in the middle of each cell, so as long as the center is more or less black, it all good. (Note that an inverted QR code - that is white squares on a black background - is also readable)
When you're that one guy that is watching this for fun, and not for any work related reasons.
Who dafaq needs this for work 😂
im doing this for writing F*ck you
I have run out of things to do during quarantine lmao
@@technologyclub6870 I'm using it to solve a CTF challenge.. we have to decode a QR code that has solid color polygons on top
CTF in Computer Security (en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Capture_the_flag)
@@ndanilo wow that seems interesting
I don't ever comment on videos. But I have to thank you for this. This was awesome. I can imagine the time it took to create all of these graphics, and want to thank you for your efforts. This is exactly the kind of thing I love to find online.
Upvote :D
Why?
@@leskerwint2607 because maybe there are people who find this useful and the guy who made the video used it's time for helping that people and making it easy to understand.
a
Someone make a vacation QR puzzle book.
Would be terribly hard but fun. (For the real nerds)
What? A puzzle book where you debug by hand and see what the code is?
yeah
the solution of the code of course is
_You are aboslutely no-life_
Mistory Minecraft It's funny you say that because you play minecraft.
Oh, but it is not no-life.
Responding to this comment actually is...
Mistory Minecraft I would totally do that. Also I have no life.
This guy is AMAZING! He takes something VERY complex, and makes it understandable. Thank you so much.
Dude I've been looking everywhere on youtube a video explaining how QR codes work, and they all say "How a QR code WORKS" but all they do is explain what they are and how to download an app to install it (aka bullshit title). Now that I've watched your video I can see why there are no videos explaining this shit, it's so complicated. Thank you so much for uploading this, I can see it's hard even for you to explain it. Also I'm subscribing.
lmao u dont know how to search properly thats why,
I just saw a short program about the Japanese guy who developed the QR code but they didn't say anything about how it worked. Your use of an Excel spreadsheet was pure genius and actually made it understandable. Now I want to read the Wikipedia article to learn more details. Thanks for producing this video. It was both entertaining and informative.
I'm not sure why you stopped putting up videos, but this here is an absolute work of art! Thank you so much for giving us such a thorough video! Well done and hope to see more from you in the future.
I know I am never gonna do this but it was nice to see someone explained it very well which was mystery for me for few years
Nice video. However it is much simpler and faster to find the characters in the ASCII table if you convert the block pattern direct to the octal values (i.e. no adding up is needed!). For example, your lower case "s" at 18m48s is the bit pattern 01_110_011 where I have separated the pattern into the 2 and 2/3 octal characters with underscores. With a few minutes practice you can just read that off as the octal number 163. Now look over to your ASCII table and there you see the octal number 163 next to the lower case "s". No sums required! There are only 7 octal patterns to remember and you can then translate any number of bits to octal or just do the mental adding up of the 4 plus 2 plus 1 bit values for each character in your head.
Good idea!
Great idea but also , NERD!
still such an awesome video even in 2024 thank u bro
This is probably something that a human can not even fully learn, no matter how much practice he takes on it.
Who knew Kermit the Frog knew about QR codes!! ... ;) Thanks for the info, great vid.
haha
rude
@@weltmeister but funny nonetheless XD
Dab
Could make an entire kid's show out of "Muppets teaching"
One way to make it easier is to start the “unmasking” in the length corner. That way you can know how long the text is and you don’t have to unmask the whole thing.
I just implemented a barcode API in an app! Then I was curious about how exactly it works! And here I'm right now!
This is what true content looks like. THANK YOU. Perfectly done.
Thanks Kermit!! Things like this are severely under appreciated! Almost like going back to the beginning days of coding.
Thank you for your efforts, you just made me a little bit more smarter.
More smarter? Quick, get thee to a grammar video!
@@johnnations5932 AHAHAHAHAHAHAH
hey. I woke up with the obsessive idea to reverse engineer/decode a QR code. I couldn't thank you more for making this video, such a great amount of work, and purely explained. thank you very much
This is the crazy man’s sudoku😂
I like how you keep saying "don't be scared". Great video. thanks.
Hi, Hank Green just sent me here. Its actually really interesting video. Thank you
I started a thread about that above.
That's not a thread fucktard.
Ddday14 Have nice day. :)
A bit (or 2 or 3 ...) complex for a tech illiterate like me, but I do know a bit about QR codes or know what one looks like and often wondered how they work. This well explained video on a complex technical topic gave me the sort of general idea of how they encode their information. That is all I wanted as a curious lay person. Thank you.
Thank you so much for this tutorial. I'd been searching for this info the whole day until I got to you and not only did you make black dots understandable, but I was laughing the entire time. Keep them coming! :)
This is the best video explaining qr code I have seen so far. Thank you.
watching this 10yrs later, AMAZING
human read qr code: 20 minutes
scanner read qr code: *beep*
In the future: A QR code inside of a QR that's inside of many more QR codes!
There's one error in this video. When you apply the masking, the purple fixed patterns weren't skipped over. They were merely ignored. In other words, for this specific qr code, the grey lines should start from the first line (0th line), and then the third, the fifth (skipped cuz it's fixed pattern), and seventh and so forth.
Hey man I got a puzzle. Can you help me solve it?
Isn't it the 7th line that is fixed not the 5th?
Incredibly detailed video. Deserves a medal:)
One hell of a hassle! You're a trooper. Masking patterns seem unnecessary to me, but the rest of the code makes more sense now. Thanks!
After having seen how to decode a MIDI file, this seems easier to me now
Hey man I got a puzzle for you. Can you help me solve it?
@@casa8017 yeah you are 4 years late
Yes
This is phenomenally well explained, even if it is waaaaay more complicated than it looks
It's about Finder patterns and timing patterns and orientation patterns. Then, byte tile shapes and layout pattern, and masks. Then there's error correction! Error control coding. BCH codes for bit error correction (format information only), Reed Solomon codes for symbol error correction.
It’s 4 AM and I’m learning to read QR codes by hand
r/ModusOperandi sent me here. Incredibly interesting stuff.
Qr coeds for otakus
who watches after 20.4.24
Hi
After I watched your video I feel overflow in my head. You are very good decoder person. I like this clip video very much.
My mind exploded
fwiw you can decode letters without looking up the ascii chart. Ascii capital letters are (64 + letter's place in the alphabet), ascii lowercase are (64 + 32 + letter's place in the alphabet). For example 98 is ascii for "b" because 98 = 64 + 32 + 2, and b is the second letter of the alphabet
Another wonderful application of an ASCII table. I'll have to pass this along to my intro to programming students. Thank you so much. :D
Fantastic... You made the horrifying QR code look easy... amazing video.
Thank you for taking the time to explain this to mere mortals. I never dreamed one could actually decode these things "by hand" as you say. The explanation of what QR codes contain makes them less annoying somehow and I would never have the patience to read the Wikipedia page on the subject. Please stop and smell the roses (or do something else outside) to treat yourself!
Great video after I learn it I can figure out rickrolls or unexpected jump scares
6:35 The 4th grey line from the bottom in the right most QR code is missing 1 grey dot.
True! The middle one of the three white squares should be grey :P
I was randomly thinking about this in the shower. You never known when this knowledge might prove useful....
Today I was thinking I wanna learn to read qr code and well now I'm here
I think you made a mistake: When masking, the timing patterns are not skipped over but are simply ignored. If you'd look up the documentation you will find that the modules that need to be inverted are defined by simple formulas that take row and column coordinate as input. The one for vertical lines being: (row) mod 2 == 0.
5:34 I'm pretty sure that's wrong, the lines start from the top, where the first row is an even row. Check the wikipedia example image with the wikipedia url, where you can see that in the middle top section, the top line is inverted.
You're not kidding about the error correction. The maths... oh my fudge, so beyond me.
what a golden nugget of a video this is. fanx!
0:22 "QR codes are actually a beast of a code" or if flipped it is actually "the code of the Beast...!"
Know what you're dealing with!
Shut the fuck up not everything is made by satan
It's a method of data storage. If you could see what sectors look like magnetically on your hdd it also has a strange appearance. Computers aren't great with image recognition so we store data as simple for them as possible. What looks easy for us is tough for a computer and what is simple for a computer is tough for us. We aren't the same. Nothing to do with religion we just need a way to talk to them quickly. Our interface with machines is a huge limiting factor we are always trying to make it easier. We have a bandwidth limitation that is done by either scanning things or slowly punching stuff in with our fingers. Nowadays talking sometimes.
It's all just way to store and talk to a machine it's nothing to worry about you are educating yourself on them though and that's good hopefully the fear of them has relaxed a bit and you understand more of how they work and what they do. It's just a piece of paper or sticker with the ability to help communicate with your computer to make lives easier. You are doing right though by investigating and learning about them.
Finally, I can play The Talos Principle without needing a phone.
This is god level , definitely subscribing you. I am watching this video after 10 years since it was created but it is still relevent.
I don't think you're supposed to ignore that row of timing patterns when you damasking the code. On my own attempt that has caused all the boxes above it to be the inversion of what they should be, also the example on wiki implies that its the first layer that is inverted.
I have a similar problem, what is this row of timing patterns you're talking about please ?
I've seen a few vids about this, but this was by far and a way the best of those videos. Thank you. Just made one completely by scratch from this, and then compared it to one made online by qrstuff website. and they are similar! though theirs seemed slightly different at first, so i now realized why, I had my ascii wrong for one of the bytes. Thanks mate!
I can realize how much time it took to make it.. Really appreciate it!🔥
Seriously you are amazing, you made it so simple.
Thank you very much for the walkthrough.
BTW, half a byte (four bits) is traditionally called a nybble.
you upload the spredsheet?
The grey lines with the black squares makes it look like bedrock.
The first little bit, as you called it, is actually an encoding nibble, as it is half a byte. Along the same lines, two bytes is equal to a sandwich. Programmers are hungry people, so you will find a lot of hardware and software named after food.
I always thought a QR code had some internet magic in it and that something had to be activated for it to be read. Never realized it's basically just information written in another language.
Someone to have come up with this QR Code must be bored to death with his social life and had nothing better to do I guess, on top of this, however fewer friends he had, they must have got bored to death with his QR code talk in his local bar. I feel sorry for that guy.
But thanks for cracking this stupid code
Great,now I can decode a rick roll qr code, because people nowadays use qr code instead of links
Now no one can Rick Roll me now
When the 20 minute tutorial doesn't even touch error correction, you know you're in some deep shit
considering QR codes are making a comeback (for some reason) this guide might prove itself handy
Man your video is 100x better than the wikipedia sh$t
You are a genius. That was fun and easy to understand
Thanks m8! you helped me decode the QR code on my homework so I can read the text of answers! Thanks Dud! I'm 11 Years Old Btw .-. Now no homework can beat meh! Or maybe even school work .-.
Thanks for sharing this knowledge with us. I have been looking for an understandable method for awhile. Your explanation is the easiest to follow. I will be trying it out on a code I found that I believe unlocks something special. Perhaps I will ask your opinion, as well. Thanks again.
I mean you could just use your phone camera...
hey, that's pretty impressive. Thank you! was looking for something like this.
Great stuff....... I especially enjoyed the definitions of the marks and coding types around the three corners. With the inverting of every other line, this tells me more about it. But I now see there are several ways of encoding those characters, and although I know the standard ASCII HEX codes for all letters and digits by heart, if I don't detect the proper encoding type first, the rest will be garbage. But very well done.
Hey man I got a qr/datamatrix code puzzle but I cant solve it. Can you help me with it?
This is genius. Both your great video/explanation AND the elegant, amazing invention and logic of the QR code itself! Thank you sir. Nice work!:) danke from Germany!
Thanks for doing these videos! These are great. The Wikipedia articles never seemed enough to make these encodings clear to me.
Could you do one on Micro QR or Mini QR? I've seen codes which only have one targeting square in one corner. How do those work?
I don't understand English very well but your explanation was damn good!! Thank you...
Thanks for the detailed explanation. I will of course use an app to create qr codes, but i always wondered how it worked and now i learnt.
By the way, how many did you spend to create that excel file? :)
With this video, I successfully decoded an actual QR code from real life. Dang, it was hard, but worth it. :)
Can anyone confirm that he did the demasking incorrectly at the top?
The demasking process is based on an algorithm.
The one he's doing is: ( i % 2 = 0 )
This means if the row is even if needs to be inverted.
But he skips the finder pattern row and acts as if it doesn't exist.
I'm pretty sure that has to be incorrect.
Great work on the graphic side, those took some time to create. You broke down the qr in a way I understand now. My reason for reading qr by hand was detailed at the 8 minute section adout over lay patterns, reading directions. Thank you for that. You lost me at 11 thru 13 minutes in video. I encourage all watching this to let it play,, it will come together for you by the end. If you want to understand qr investing 20 minutes here will save you 5 hours watching other videos that only tell what apk to download. This video tells details you can use and apply. Next video will you explain how files are hidden inside image files and how to decode them. FIBER0PTIC / FBR, The HUMBLE Guys, Napalm and Worship.
who came over after watching hank green's video?
Totally not me
Yeah, but this man uses too many pauses and modifiers that break up the flow. I cant follow his teaching.
That's a weird ass name you got there boy
Blake T me?
Levi Langer Lol you're name is too long
AND... fun with Excel! Great video.
Finally
*knowing that a Rick roll is gonna be next in my autoplay*
*knowing a rickroll link even though it’s not the same one*
*knowing a rickroll from a QR code even thought it’s not the same*
Its all here
10:10 I like the noise you made there. I think I'm gonna sample it to use as an instrument for electronic music :)
10:11
Very good video, but the yellow is not formatting crap! It is the extra parity bits of a complete BCH code for error correction, to protect the formatting information.
Hi! Congrats for the video! You explained very well a very complicated issue that nowadays became a regular stuff! 👏👏Keep up the good work! 🙏🙏
4 bits or half a byte is called a nibble
Wow thanks for this! Was curious how a QR code read information
Awesome vid. You sound like Kermit The Frog, lol.
Thank you so much for this clear and detailed explanation! Appreciate the effort and time you spent in doing it!
I wonder if one was to manipulate the boxes by drawing in black squares in accordingly. Could we then have changed the word?
Great video!
SOMEWHERE OUT THERE, THERE IS A MANUAL QR DECODING CONTEST GOING ON...
trying to make an algorythm that generates a QR code from a text, thanks
Great explanation but I really wanted to know about the error correction.
Great Video!
I love the video You made! It shows how to decode a qr code manually which is awesome. I however would like to see a more detailed video on this matter, if you are interested in doing that,
I want to create my own QR code manually. One of your videos would explain much more than the ISO specification.. I want to learn how to create both M1-M4 and 1-40 manually. I also would love to create the error encoding manually. If you find the time, it would be awesome if ou could do a more detailed follow up so everybody could create a QR code on the go. (most people wn't, but lots of people would enjoy the challenge and be happy if it works.
Hey man I got a qr/datamatrix code puzzle but I cant solve it. Can you help me with it?
Any chance for a video about the error correction sections?
+Matt Tycho I'll take a look into them but no promises. Those are some heavy math.
+Matt Tycho Alright, looking for some references, here's what I've found:
en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Reed%E2%80%93Solomon_codes_for_coders
downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp-pdf-files/WHP031.pdf
I'll look into these later to see if it's something I can understand and possibly make a video from.
@@Pillazo man, you are a champion.
Please leave the small numbers once you decode so the pattern shows up easier.
This is a little late to ask, but how do custom QR codes work where they put an image in the middle of the QR code or use a circular shape? Are they just adding random dots around the outside to fit the shape or is that actual data?
And are they just covering up the error correction information in the middle of the QR code which doesn't impact the functionality or just are they changing how the QR code data flows?
For QR codes with an image in the middle, it's possible thanks to a high level of error correction. Indeed, with the highest level you can technically recover as much as 30% of the code. So the image covers some data but leaves enough information to still have a readable QR code.
For circular QR codes, I haven't personally encountered any before you asked but yes, it's probably just gibberish added to the outside, which makes these technically no longer QR codes since the ISO standards states that a 4-module wide area should be left empty all around the symbol. As for QR codes with non-square tiles (circles, rounded square, etc.), that's not an issue because the reader samples color in the middle of each cell, so as long as the center is more or less black, it all good. (Note that an inverted QR code - that is white squares on a black background - is also readable)
I think that it's based on Conway's game of life.
Witty and fun to watch. Great stuff mate!