I recently got a new QR code reader (2DSense) on my iPhone. I was curious to see whether it was possible to cross-stitch a QR code that could be read using this app. It seemed logical to stitch a QR code that resolves to http://serenarex.wordpress.com. That way people could take a photo of it on my site on their iPhone/Android phone, and it would take them to… where they already were. I like recursion.
I used qrencode on Linux to generate the QR code, and PCStitch to make the pattern.
I managed to get 2DSense to resolve it from the cross-stitch, but only when holding it a certain distance away.
I think it might work better with higher count Aida cloth, and more threads (this was 4 threads of DMC 310).
I later found out that a guy called John Young had made one a couple of years before. His was for a pillow cover, and it encoded the URL for the wikipedia entry for ‘pillow’. Looking at his one he’s gone for 2×2 stitches for each pixel, which seems much more likely to be readable by a QR code reader.
