QR Codes Explained

Introduction to barcodes

QR codes are beginning to gain ground in the UK so I've decided to write an article covering the brief history of barcodes and the lead up to the introduction of QR Codes to give you an understanding of the technology. I've been in IT for 20 years and, as with most technically orientated people, I tend to fall into the 'techie' trap when writing articles explaining technology. The article normally ends up reading like a technical manual for NASA's space shuttle so I've made a conscious effort to stick to layman's terms to make the article clear for a wide audience.

My aim is to educate those of you who are not familiar with barcode technology if there's a section of the article that you believe needs to be explained in a little more detail, expanded or simply rectified please email me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it along with the paragraph that needs to be modified and I'll update the article.

What is a barcode ?

Barcodes are simply a mechanism to capture information without the need to type in letters and numbers at the keyboard and virtually everything you buy these days in supermarkets have a barcode which simply contains a unique product code. The actual number printed beneath the barcode is the actual number that is encoded in the barcode. The human-readable number is not actually read by the barcode scanner, It's just there for us to quote to customer services departments when you have a issue with a product.
If you quote this number the exact product can be identified when the call center adviser enters the number into their stock system.
Barcodes you see on everyday supermarket items are in a format (symbology) known as EAN (European Article Number) and are classed as 1D (One dimensional) barcodes as the vertical stripes represent a series of numbers.

Barcode on a tin of beans

Previously UPC (Universal product code) codes were used but were slightly too short to cope with the ever expanding amount of goods so an extra digit was added to the beginning of the UPC code to make it 13 digits and the EAN-13 code was born.

How do 1D barcode scanners work ?

Most people believe that a barcode scanner scans the black strips to decode the information stored in the barcode. It actually scans the white space between the black strips . Light is absorbed by darker colours so the scanner emits a laser beam across the barcode and the white areas bounce back the light to the photosensor in the scanner.

In reality 1D barcodes could be only 1mm high (the scanner need only scan a horizontal series of strips (or dots) to decode the information but a very steady hand and lots of patience would be needed to line the horizontal laser beam exactly on the 1mm strips. Making the barcode large just makes it much easier to scan.

History of the Barcode

Way back in 1952 inventors Joseph Woodland, Jordin Johanson and Bernard Silver were issued patent (#2,612,994) for their work based on identifying railroad cars using an Automated Car identification system (ACI, CarTrack). These labels were placed on either side of the rolling stock allowing automatic identification. Their system employed an ink which glowed under ultra-violet allowing the details to be read by a scanning system.

Barcodes began to be commercially used in 1966 and the first UPC code was scanned from the side of a 10 pack of Wrigley's gum at Marsh's supermarket in Troy, Ohio with large scale take up around the 1980’s.

Barcode Symbologies

As more companies began to use barcodes for different uses new types of barcode were introduced to cater for different requirements. Soon barcodes were not only holding numbers but letters too. These variations are know as symbologies. Sample variations include UPC, EAN-8, EAN-13, Code92, Code 128, POSTNET, PostBar, ITF-14 and OneCode out of around 30.

2D Code

When the need to store lots more information in a barcode arose the concept of 2D barcodes (otherwise known as a matrix code or 2D code) was born. Simply using the existing 1D barcode wouldn’t work if you needed to store 7,000 letters and numbers instead of 12 (Just imagine the length of the barcode!). The QR code design allows characters to be stored in a format where the data is not identified by a single vertical black strip. Instead, characters can be placed anywhere within a rectangle (information is stored in both the horizontal and vertical directions). As with 1D codes there are lots of variations of 2D codes including QR Code, Color Code, EZcode, Aztec code, Bullseye, MaxiCode, 3-DI, Shot Code and SemaCode out of around 40.

Being able to store a lot more characters than it’s 1D predecessor has enabled the storage of lots of different kinds of information such as Web site addresses, Mobile telephone numbers along with a SMS message, contact cards (e.g VCards), geographic information, plain text and images as well as a host of other information.

2D symbologies cannot be read by a laser beam as there is generally no sweep pattern that can encompass the entire symbol so camera technology is employed.

QR Codes

Denso Wave created the Quick Response code back in 1994 to track parts in vehicle manufacturing (Denso is a member of the Toyota group of companies and is also the patent holder). Unlike some other 2D symbologies that require a license to use the 2D code the QR Code is free to use by anyone.

Japan is currently the largest user of QR Codes (QR Codes are the de facto standard for Japanese mobile phones) with Australia and the United states of America heading in the same direction. QR codes started to hit the UK last year and I estimate we’re about 12-18 months away from large scale usage. One of the main barriers to 2D Code usage is mobile phone charges for internet browsing. Once the mobile phone service providers start bundling internet browsing costs into their monthly price plans (as with iPhone) QR codes containing web site addresses will start take off.

How do QR Codes work ?

QR Codes simply store characters. To enable the mobile phone to understand what action it needs to take when the QR Code is scanned the first few characters of the text are analyzed for a keyword.

I’ve listed a few keywords currently used in QR Codes to give you a better understanding :-

Keyword	Example text	Instruction
http://	http://www.qrme.co.uk	Browse to a website
mailto:	mailto: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it	Invoke an email message
tel:	tel:+44123456789	Telephone a number
sms: or smsto	sms: +4407912345678	Send a sms message

Standardisation of QR Codes

Early adopters to QR codes came up with their own (similar keywords) but ,as far as I’m aware to date, there are no finished ratified standards for keywords. Google have attempted to set standards early in the game by suggesting the keywords that should be used along with guidelines for the mobile phones reaction to the keyword. For a full overview of these guidelines visit http://code.google.com/p/zxing/wiki/BarcodeContents.

How can we use QR Codes ?

With almost all of the adult population in the UK owning a mobile phone these days the possibilities for the usage of QR Codes are endless. McDonalds in Japan are using them on the side of their burger boxes which, once scanned, takes you to a web page displaying nutritional information, the film 28 weeks later posted a very large QR Code on a billboard in London recently to promote the film (If it's large enough you could scan it from a mile away), Harrods of London used them in a recent advertising campaign to attract a tech savvy audience, safety barriers are being made from them that are being erected around the corner of Houston and Broadway (New York City, USA) by artists while reconstruction is underway and Umbro recently included a QR Code tag on the inside of the latest England football shirt (which takes you to a secret mobile website). Lots of companies are finding ways to use them. A bit of imagination is all you need.

Google charts and QR Codes

If you run a website you don’t need to hire an expensive programmer to spend hours writing a program to generate a QR code on your website as Google have added these to their Charting functions. As well as creating bar charts, Pie charts, Venn diagrams etc you can now generate a one with one line.

Ask your website developers to add this one line to your website and specify your mobile website address. This will generate a static 120 pixel x 120 pixel QR Code.

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=qr&chl=http://www.mywebsite.co.uk/mobile&chs=120x120.

See our web forum for more examples of how to generate a QR code

Note that normal QR Codes will not give you tracking cababilities. You'll have to get this functionality included in your webiste redesign.

Free QRMe service and QR Codes

With the recession sweeping the world and you're budget probably lowered to ride the storm you'll be glad to know QRMe.co.uk offer a QR Code tracking service free of charge.

All you need to do is sign up and copy the QR code image that is generated for you and ask your developer to put this on your website. Our QR Codes (QRMe codes) are trackable allowing you to see where and when your QRMe Code was scanned and the system is realtime. Ideal for tracking your marketing. Note that until GPS technology is available on most mobile phones the QRMe service relies on IP address to identify the location that the QRMe Code was scanned. Mobile phone operators seem to allocate the IP address of their internet point of presence (Their connection to the internet) so the location may not be entirely accutate. If you're in one town and you connect to the internet it seems that the mobile phone uses 3G (or whatever service) to connect to the mobile phone service provider and the traffic is routed to their nearest POP. If the nearest POP is in the next town you'll be allocated an IP address associated with that town.

Read about QRMe Dynamic QR Code Tracking