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neb:MurrayM:The one in the Countdown, just past the entry gates on the right. It's at about waist height, tried scanning both from standing height and crouched down and neither worked.
Where abouts in Glenfield Mall? That's my local so I'll try scanning it too and we might be able to figure out if it's an app problem, poster problem or phone problem.
I stopped in at the Glenfield Mall Countdown to check out their QR code. Just so everyone knows exactly what it looks like, here's a photo I took:
I play a game called Munzee that involves hunting for QR codes in the real world and scanning them for points. As such I've scanned thousands of QR codes over the last 7 years that I've been playing and I'm very accustomed to the variety of issues that can prevent the proper scanning of QR codes and the possible workarounds that can be used to get a successful scan. In Munzee the QR codes are generally the size of a postage stamp (or even smaller) and since they're left out in the weather (eg on light poles, power transformers, back of road signs, etc) they can get damaged.
So back to the QR code in the Glenfield Countdown. First off I found I had the same issue as @neb, the QR code didn't scan straight away. It took me about 3 minutes of trying different things before I could get it to scan. I think that there were two issues at play: First the poster had been put inside a frame that was on a stand. As you can see from the photo the poster looks a bit buckled at the bottom and this is causing it to not be totally flat. I tried to correct this but couldn't; the poster always buckled forward or backwards when I attempted to get it to stay flat in the frame. Maybe the frame isn't 100% square, maybe the poster hasn't been cut 100% square, maybe the poster is a few millimeters too big for the frame, I don't know. Second, the poster is at waist height. To get a successful scan I had to bend right down and hold my phone parallel to the poster as it wouldn't scan when I was standing up and angling my phone down.
I know from experience with playing Munzee that QR codes most definitely can be scanned when they aren't 100% flat (Munzee players often put QR code stickers on poles, so the surface of the QR code ends up being curved, and the Munzee app's scanner has no problem scanning these). I also know from experience that QR codes can be scanned from different angles as I do it all the time when playing Munzee.
As a test I tried using the Munzee app to scan Countdown's QR code and it refused to even acknowledge it (normally it would scan a non-Munzee QR code and tell you that it's not a valid Munzee code). Similarly I tried scanning it with Google Lens and it too refused to scan it. Just a few minutes ago I tried to scan the Govt QR code that we've got on our office door (taped flat to the glass door) and both the Munzee app and Google Lens scanned it within a second or two.
There are 40 different versions of QR codes, with each version being able to store more data than the previous version. In order to store more data the dots that make up the QR code have to be denser. A version 1 QR code looks like this:
A version 10 QR code looks like this:
A version 40 QR code looks like this:
Obviously the lower versions are much easier to scan than the higher versions (at a guess I'd say the Munzee QR codes are using version 3 and the Govt codes look like maybe version 10), especially when you take into account real-world problems that will interfare with the scanning (glare, brightness levels, possible damage to the QR code, etc). QR codes do have error correction built into them to help with parts of the code being damaged (I've been able to scan codes that have had a cigarette stubbed out on them causing the middle of the code to be burned away) but this can only help so much. Because the Govt QR codes are using a higher version number in order to pack more data into them (I believe they contain a JSON structure of a few hundred characters) they need to be displayed optimally in order for the scan to work.
So, in conculsion, in my opinion the problem with scanning this particular QR code isn't with my phone's camera or the Govt app, it's with the poster. The poster could be improved by positioning it flat within the frame and also positioning it higher up so people don't have to angle their phone down to scan it.
In addition I'd like to add that I was very disappointed in the Countdown shoppers that walked into the store while I was mucking around trying the scan the code. There must have been at least 20 people that walked straight past the code and not a single one tried to scan it (although I'm sure that 100% of them would have given up after attempting for a few seconds). I'm pretty sure that none of the Countdown employees have been scanning the code either, otherwise they would have found out how difficult it is to scan this code and reported the problem to their manager (who also should have been scanning the code daily).
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