That is a fenomenal idea! I hadn't thought about it and these are the exact kind of situations it could solve well. I'll definitely add it to the roadmap. Thank you

Coming full circle!

For context, I'm a software developer with around 15 years of experience. Most of it writing Android and iOS apps in Java, Kotlin, Swift and lately Dart (Flutter) + Rust which is what this project is written in.

Although I did start the project from scratch I have lately been using Claude Code as a coding assistant. I write code myself but I also let it write or refactor parts of it. The CLI tool is the part that Claude has mostly written from scratch because it's not something I had experience in writing before. That being said I also review all the code that Claude writes.

Thanks for asking! there's also some disclosure about this in the readme file

Thank you for the suggestion!

dev.blastapps.blastqr 60:E3:A6:C0:63:1D:C3:A0:0C:78:E4:C9:E4:89:B3:03:4F:A9:7D:49:D0:B9:3E:CF:56:B2:33:A8:C3:DD:F6:83

it's been added to the readme as well.

Isn't app verifier a dead project?

*illicit

I believe IP cameras usually can't reach fidelity and frame rate needed for 1.4 mb/s

And yes, programs like this existed, so it always could

You bring up great points!

Here are some benchmarks including videos (Note that these are best case conditions but should be achievable): https://codeberg.org/blast/blastqr#real-world-benchmarks

Most of the testing I did with my now 7 years old Galaxy S10e. It only scans at 30FPS but it can handle 6 codes at once which is a pretty decent 420 kB/s. During testing on the iPhone 17 which can scan at 60 or 120fps I think the CPU did not become the bottleneck until around 8 codes at more than 90fps. That is something I still need to test and document more thoroughly though.

I do use standard QR codes. By default Version 40 which can store almost 3 KB. It is configurable in the app's settings.

Regarding color, libcimbar (https://github.com/sz3/libcimbar) is a project that does exactly that although the speeds are not quite as high yet. Additionally, one of the cpu optimizations in blastQR (and qr scanners in general) is to drop color so that each frame that gets copied in memory is smaller. It makes a difference when you're processing at high fps.

The cool part is that codes are generated indefinitely so basically you can keep scanning until you receive the data. You don't need to capture every frame or scan in any particular order.

This is made possible by raptorQ (https://github.com/cberner/raptorq) the fountain code encoding used by blastqr.

Feel free to try it out!

that sounds like a really fun experiment! the protocol would need some tweaking to be able to continuously stream data. other than that it would probably work fine if the image is clear enough!

Yes, over the years I've tried many solutions. The latest popular one being Decimen and others mentioned in the readme.

Since it seems you are interested in the field I'd be very happy if you tried it and told me how it compares to the rest. blastQR is still a work in progress so any feedback would be very helpful!

A web UI is also possible. I'm not working on it right now but it's something the project should support in the future.

Some of the use cases I thought about:

• Regular file transfers: It works well as long as the files are not too big. I use it often between my phone and laptop.
• Sensitive information: You can transfer files without relying on cloud services or network infrastructure. There's a password encryption feature for that. If you don't enable that someone could decode the information from the QR codes.
• Broadcast on a large screen so multiple devices can receive data without requiring an internet connection during internet outage/government internet crackdown.
• Air-gapped systems: Transfer files to and from devices that are not connected to a network.

Hopefully people will find new and interesting use cases for it too.

Bit chat got Scunthorped

An interesting name _removed_at is /j

They've answered that here now, fyi https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/29305229

For those asking about RGB, there are a few reasons why QR codes work better for now:

• Black and white still reads fine in bad lighting or on cheap cameras. Phones are very optimized for scanning QRs so it's more reliable and less error prone.
• Video compression, colors shifting with white balance, screen type, all of those make it harder to tell colors apart so you need more aggressive error correction. The real gain ends up smaller than it sounds.

You can already transfer entire (small) programs and media with blastQR btw! Feel free to try and report back. The limit is around 4 GB files but that would take ages.

That said, there is a project called libcimbar that is improving and does work with colors: https://github.com/sz3/libcimbar

https://hackertube.org/watch/ExwqNreocpg

OP answered it here:

https://lemmy.ca/comment/26459043

If you're in an environment where turning on your cell radios could compromise you then you'd like something that operates through something other than radio. Two people sharing data at a protest for example.

Funfact: localsend works between two smartphones if on is on hotspot mod

Could be for airgapped devices

I particularly like the idea of visual filesharing with no network transmission that could be intercepted

Magic Wormhole comes to mind.

yes! someone mentioned a project that does that https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/29299746

and in the case of blastQR you can optionally uses sound to tell the sender that a transfer has been completed. It's something I'm looking to extend in the future so that the receiver can do more things like tell the sender what are the best settings for the transfer.

Since century done with Silbo in the Spanish La Gomera Island as ancient communication method out of the view up to 5 km in mountainous terrain. Nowadays still learned there in school, used in cities by young people to find and communicate with other in a crowd. In the UNESCO List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Irahmx1V9fo

I do miss the demon screaming of modems.

QR codes have error correction built in

Oh my you would be so excited that this exists. Someone made an SMS app that works over audio, I played around with my friend and it works so well actually

https://github.com/aicodix/rattlegram

https://apt.izzysoft.de/packages/com.aicodix.rattlegram

50% of human progress was someone scratching an itch to fill a niche.

Your app needs to be present on both devices

Yeah, that's the biggest problem, but I wouldn't say there are no use cases

you could install it onto the airgapped machine befpre taking it offline, or transfer the apk to the airgapped machine via usb, and then remove the usb port.

USB and Wifi have had vulnerabilities, so airgapped environments often disable them. This of course shifts the attack surface to the app, but it might be a smaller attack surface.

%99.99 of all new open source projects are vibecoded unfortunately.

It seems Codeberg doesn't allow vibe coded projects. Hopefully its something they enforce, but at least its in the TOS.

https://blog.codeberg.org/protecting-our-floss-commons-from-llms.html

Indeed but nowhere as fun ;)

it is most useful when you don't want to connect anything or need to broadcast data to multiple devices simultaneously. For example transmitting info to a bunch of phones during a digital blackout where the government has cut off internet. Also useful for air-gapped systems!

If you happen to have one handy