What is a QR code?

To start with, it is a ‘Quick Response’ code. I am sure many of us would have forgotten about this. We all use it every day typically while making a payment. We also talked about it in our last article on UPI. While we use it regularly, we seldom think about what exactly is a QR code and what happens when we scan it.

The picture below of a QR code makes us feel like an abstract painting and an asymmetrical figure. But there is a method to this vagueness. without making it too technical, let us find out some features of QR code. Please also have a look at another picture which talks about ‘parts’ of QR code.

1)????? QR code was invented in 1994, by Japanese company ‘Denso Wave’ for labelling automobile parts.

2)????? A QR code/figure/area has eight components. They are called Quite Zone, Finder patterns, separator, timing pattern, alignment pattern, data format, version identification and ‘actual data and error correction code’.

3)????? Quite zone is the most outer boundary of the QR code and is meant to separate QR code from other data.

4)????? Do you see three boxes in the three corners? These boxes are finder patterns and they allow the scanners to recognise the QR codes accurately and allow it to read it at high speed.

5)????? There are 40 versions of QR code.

6)????? ‘Data and error correction code’ is the one which understands when we scan the QR code and then allows us to take next steps, say make payment, open url, show the information, show the menu in the restaurant etc. QR Code is capable of encoding the following characters: a) numeric data (digits 0 - 9), b) alphanumeric data (digits 0 - 9; upper case letters A - Z; nine other characters: space, $ % * + - . / : ), c) byte data (default: ISO/IEC 8859-1; or other sets as otherwise defined), and d) Kanji characters. Kanji characters in QR Code 2005 can be compacted into 13 bits.

7)????? QR code is a two dimensional barcode and hence, it can be scanned from any angle unlike normal barcode which is a one dimensional figure and needs to be scanned in a particular angle. Two dimensional means that it can have data vertically and as well as horizontally.

I think this is enough for today !!!

Know Your Basics Series – Article 44