Creating a Free QR code

Creating a QR code that represents a bit of text is a much simpler process than creating an RFID tag that does the same.  That’s because there are free websites that provide that capability.  This page will show you how to create a free QR code that represents the word “different”.

Start by going to The QR Code Generator website (there are other sites that provide the same service and you’re welcome to use those).   You’ll see something like this:

You can use the site to create QR codes that direct people to a website but you simply encode some text.  Begin by clicking on the “FREE TEXT” icon:

Type some text into the box below:

This text must match the name of the audio file that you’ve placed on the SD card.  The text value above will produce a QR code that causes the Voice It to play an audio file called “different.wav”.

Now look to the right at the example QR code:

The image will update as you type your text value.  There are three icons above the QR code.  The one on the left will allow you to download a copy of the QR code while the one in the middle will place a copy of the QR code image on your clipboard so it’s ready to paste directly into a document.  We recommend that you download each of the QR codes that you create.  Give the file you create a name that matches the text that the code represents.  You may need to use a QR code many times and it’s helpful not to have to recreate it each time.

For now you can just print a copy of the QR code for use in testing your Voice It assembly.  A 1 inch by 1 inch  (25 mm by 25 mm) image is sufficiently large for the QR code scanner to see and read it.

Note, if you create a QR code using this method and the Voice It won’t read it – meaning that you show the code to the Voice It but nothing at all happens – the code may be incomplete.  One way this can happen is to accidently add a space to the end of the words in the text box described above.  For example, a code associated with “GM_complete “, the code can’t be read by the Voice It or any other QR code reader.  (You can also try adding a space at the end of the code and then deleting it.)  Test your code, as described below, before downloading it.

Creating a Free Barcode

The Voice It QR code reader module can also read most barcodes.  You can create a barcode that encodes text just like a QR code.:

There are several websites where you can do this.  For this discussion we’ll describe using the Barcodes Inc. website.  (Note that you can also use this site to create QR codes.)

When you open the link above you’ll see a page with a form that looks like this:

Type the text to encode in the barcode where you see “Your Text” and press the “Generate Barcode” button.  The form will update to show what your barcode will look like:

If you’re using a Windows PC, right click on the image of the barcode and choose “Save image as…” to save the image as a file to print at a later time.  (If you’re using a Mac, you’ll need to follow the process appropriate there to accomplish the same thing.)

Testing Your QR code or Barcode

You can test the validity of your QR code or barcode quickly using your smartphone.  It can be helpful to do that test before you download a copy of the QR code or barcode.

Install a QR code/barcode reader app on your smartphone and test whether the app can properly read the QR code/barcode.  There are many of these apps that can read these codes.  The image below was captured from the “QR & Barcode Scanner” app on an Android phone:

 

As a final note, you can use your code scanning app to discover the number encoded in a commercial barcode on any product with a barcode and then use this number to name the audio file that you create for this product:

In this example you’d name your audio file “895059000616.wav”.