Generating glowforge parameters QR codes for custom settings

My GoPro now has a QR generator for custom settings. Place the code in front of the camera and it adopts those presets. Is this possible with Glowforge? An app that generates custom QR codes so that we can develop custom materials and label them ourselves.

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Nope.

Long asked for, no sign of it coming.

If you want Glowforge staff to see your suggestion, either email support or open a topic in problems and support. Unfortunately they don’t read this category.

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I assume its a priority agreement with the ProofGrade suppliers to not undercut (no pun) their development. But so it is written, so shall it be done. We have a voice.

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Previously:

And a few more:
https://community.glowforge.com/search?q=Reverse%20engineer%20QR

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The QR code does not contain settings.

it simply identifies the material.

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Emphatically, the ProofGrade products are awesome! I prefer them. But, to expand our creativity, the community needs convenient reuse of our personally developed parameters. This is a collective good that will expand Glowforge adoption exponentially.

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Ok, i get it, save your parameters and reuse them, but sharing them is easy and there is no reason to make it easy through QR code’s. I withdraw my suggestion.

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No need to withdraw, I personally think it’s a cool idea, and on its surface it doesn’t seem like there’s a reason why it can’t be done. I can’t say for sure why Glowforge hasn’t made a way to do it, I just know that they haven’t and that features are released pretty slowly.

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At least there are two of us willing to lose sleep for the benefit of our Compadres.
Thank you for the support!

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Welcome to the community! No need to withdraw – It’s an interesting idea that’s been floated many times in the past five or so years.

Just in case you’re interested, here’s a behind-the-scenes peek at how Proofgrade QR codes work:

  1. The GF scans the code, which translates into a alphabetic string like “GBHQ-EWTY” and sends it to the GF servers back at the mothership.
  2. There is a database at the mothership that contains the current settings that match the alpha code for that particular batch of proofgrade.
  3. The current settings are returned to your GF and selected in the UI.

Note that current is emphasized – the system is designed so that settings for a particular batch of Proofgrade can be adjusted (compensating for acrylic with a different density, new mdf (Draftboard) formulations, etc.). If QA/QC tests show a particular batch has an issue, they can adjust the settings automagically.

Two challenges arise – (1) How to get everyone’s custom QR codes into the lookup table without compromising the security of that table and (2) how to answer the inevitable complaints, e.g. “I entered settings for material X I bought from source Y last year, but now they don’t work.”

BTW – I don’t think for a moment that you would do that – you’ve thought about this and understand that a feature like this would essentially be a bookmark, but thousands of posts to P&S (and FB groups :roll_eyes:) lead me to believe it would be a disaster for GF.

GF has banked their reputation on the principle that Proofgrade codes “just work” so I can’t imagine that they would open Pandora’s box like that.

Instead, after numerous requests, they gave us the ability to save and name our personal settings in the UI.

YMMV, of course, but I’d rather select my “3mm Extruded Acrylic” settings with 2 mouse clicks than create a new QR code, print it out, submit the settings (the first time), and remember to place the code my materials.

I think you’ll find that our online community has many, many members (@evansd2 among them) that are willing to help each other, up to and including losing sleep. :wink: Again, welcome to the community – I’m sure you’ll find it to be a great resource!

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You know that never occurred to me, but you are 100% on target with that statement! I’ve been labeling some holographic stickers lately, and printing out the labels and placing them is a royal PITA and a huge time waster. (No way around that for this use, unfortunately.)

Welcome to the forum @jeffschryver! Keep on thinking up new ideas, the folks at GF are always looking for ways to improve the machine…and you never know which ones will trip the trigger with an “AHAH!” moment. They love to hear our ideas, and they might eventually implement them if they are feasible.
(Yes, they’re completely crazy.) :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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Similarly:

The QR codes thing is a cool idea but for most things it might be overkill, ymmv.

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[couple of assumptions here, but…] That’s solved, you’d just use the table that we are using to store personal material settings.

You look at the QR code value, check against official settings (or use a pattern recognition, maybe all homebrew settings have a code that starts with “H” instead of “G”, idk), and then that cues the GFUI to look at your personal stored settings.

That would imply that the homemade QR settings codes would not be sharable, but not necessarily. You could do it either way.

All this is just off the top of my head, there could be 20 reasons why this can’t be done the way I’m suggesting. There’s no way for us to know exactly what challenges there may be, but it really does seem doable, they just haven’t.

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