DarkCode – 8-color barcode, 140k chars (decoder 50% broken)

https://github.com/Typexex/DarkCode-Bardo

by typexaitypexex • 6 months ago

3 3 6 months ago

Built this as a research project to test if multi-color barcodes can beat QR code capacity. Uses 8 RGB colors (3 bits/pixel vs 1 bit).

Encoding works fine. Decoding fails ~50% due to camera color distortion, lighting variance, and compression artifacts.

Tech: Kotlin/C++, OpenCV, Reed-Solomon over GF(2^8), LZMA compression.

Main question: is this fundamentally broken with consumer cameras, or solvable with better calibration/ML?

Apache 2.0 licensed. The Reed-Solomon implementation might be useful even if the barcode concept doesn't pan out.

carl_dr• 6 months ago

Literally the most important thing you could have included in that README is a few samples of how it looks, and you might have found some people to answer the questions you have.

Even an examples directory in the repo with some samples would have helped.

ungreased0675• 6 months ago

What does it look like?

DarkCode – 8-color barcode, 140k chars (decoder 50% broken)

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