QR codes

[pjsf]

due to a recent edict by my state government I find I'm no longer able to buy food or alcohol since I have to sign in at all restaurants and bars using a random "guest register" which pretty much every establishment is only enabling access to via a QR code. Obviously The govt say that establishments "should" allow other electronic means to register, but people are lazy so they don't. I dislike QR codes as much as the next person (I mean they could just print the URL as text - but obviously they don't bother) but need a solution.

I've mostly been using Manjaro recently but any suggestions using other distos welcomed.

What I've tried and what's failed.

obviously neither qtqr or cobang allow access to the camera and neither scale very well either
Taking picture using megapixel and using zbar or uploading the jpg to onlinebarcodereader have been (repeatedly) unsuccessful.
Taking the raw files from megapixel  and creating higher resolution jpgs for those apps/services/applying sharpening filters using rawtherapee also hasn't worked.
UBports and sailfish both have qr readers but neither  can access the camera.

I'm beginning to wonder if the camera can even take sharp enough pictures to decode a qr although the results I've achieved with rawtherapee have looked fine.

[barray]

The main camera should be more than good enough (5MP), there's likely an issue with the software.

Manjaro is based on Arch, so you should in theory be able to probe the camera settings through the v4l if it's been setup correctly.

Checkout this to get started: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Webcam_Setup

You should be able to write a script that takes a picture with the given settings, bypassing whatever is setup by the phone OS.

[dukla2000]

Proof of concept code to do it in MegaPixels was published in September.