Why it was built
The first version of this site came from a very ordinary experience: needing a QR code for a menu, using a "free" generator, and finding a month later that the code opened an upgrade page instead of the menu. The generator had not broken. It had handed out a dynamic code — a short link to its own server — and switched the redirect off when the trial ended.
A QR code is a cheap, thirty-year-old standard that a phone can read with no help from anyone. The only reason a code stops working is that someone put a server between the pattern and the destination and then turned it off. This site exists to make the other kind, and to explain the difference plainly enough that fewer people get caught.
What it is
A static site: a handful of HTML pages and one small JavaScript file that draws QR codes on your device. No accounts, no database, no analytics by default, no uploads. It is hosted on a CDN, costs almost nothing to run, and would keep every code it ever made working even if it went offline tomorrow, because the codes never depended on it in the first place.
The whole thing is open source. The code is on GitHub, including the tests that render every kind of code to pixels and scan it back to prove it decodes.
Who
Made by charlymtz.com. Bug reports, corrections to the copy and feature ideas are welcome through the contact page.