Someone Should: Create QR codes for equipment

Space and infrastructure Issues & Requests
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Here’s a “Someone Should” that could probably be done in an evening of work.

What is a “Someone Should” you ask? This is a call to action, a way of rallying YOU, ME, and Anyone else who can help. They are things that can improve the space. If you are looking for a way to help the space but just don’t know where to look, keep an eye out for “Someone Should” posts.

Someone Should Create QR codes for our equipment
We currently have an equipment wiki, but a lot of people don’t even know it exists. If you didn’t know it exists, I don’t blame you, here it is:
https://vanhack.ca/doku.php?id=tool

Every significant piece of equipment needs to have an entry in the wiki. Some tools have a lot of information, and some are either just stubs or completely missing. But it is difficult to know, walking through the space, what tools DO and DON’T have wikis, and it should be easy to pull them up quickly.

Therefore, at minimum for every stationary and bench top tool, we should design, print, and affix a QR code pointing to the tool wiki for that tool. This will promote retrieving and recording useful information about a tool.

If you do any work on this, please post back here and let us know what you did!

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I have made up some QR codes for an inventory system that pulled up a spread sheet with the items. I used a free generator service and it was annoying, it had ads so I stopped using it. Does anyone have experience using a better generator?

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i think the software that came with our label printer can do QR code

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There’s a number of easy libraries to use. I was thinking of just some javascript lib. Maybe we should write it as a dokuwiki plugin?

One example:
http://jeromeetienne.github.io/jquery-qrcode/examples/basic.html

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Okay; I did this:

https://mikepkes.github.io/referralQR/

If you point at that page, it’ll give you a QR code for whatever page it was linked from. For instance, if you click on it now, it’ll give you a link to this post.

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Years ago I had the thought of starting an inventory system like what you folks are talking about. You would have a REST API you could push a new record to.

It would create a Docuwiki page, and also a graphic with a QR code that linked back to the wiki page.

The idea was to have RPi with a little monitor that you could type in info, press a button, and have the label printer spit out a label.

I updated the Docuwiki to enable page creation some time ago, but haven’t checked on it since.

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I love the inventory system, and it could probably replace simple equipment tagging, but it does seem like a bigger project.

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Here’s a previous attempt at this, too:

I think there was at least one similar push a few years before that

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Awesome, now that I have an easy way to make a QR code (just a few lines of JS) all I need is something to make them pretty; anyone want to help me come up with a sticker template?

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Anyone want to give me pointers on the design/look?

This is implemented as simple css.

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After a fair bit of arting advice, I’ve cleaned it up just a bit.

Unless anyone has improvements, I’ll print some of these next week.

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I suck at CSS, so here’s my file if someone wants to imrpove:

qrinfo.html.zip (933 Bytes)

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vhs_tool_QR.pdf (72.4 KB)

Anyone happen to have sticker paper?

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Half of these have been deployed, the other half are waiting with tape and scissors on the main table, if I don’t get to them, feel free to finish. (ran out of time today)

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On open nights, please remember to demonstrate the QR codes for equipment.

iOS 11+ will recognize QR codes in the camera app.

For many android phones, or sounds like a similar process:

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