vcard-qr

Generate basic VCard QR codes from your terminal. Stick them on your things so people can contact you if they get lost!

This little program is only vaguely serious; I wrote it after hearing about Tile's lost and found labels product, which will run you $15 for... some QR codes pointing to a web page with your information on it. Now, I'm not exactly sure what the total cost of a mass-produced sticker sheet and a few kilobytes of database storage is, but I'm going to make an educated guess and say its somewhere in the ballpark of a few pennies.

"What a ripoff!" I thought. "And, come to think of it, can't QR codes contain VCards...?"

And thus vcard-qr was born.

Features

• Interactively generate VCard QR codes.
• Free and open source.
• Works offline forever.

Or, expressed in a way my fellow Zoomers will have an easier time understanding:

Usage

Just invoke cargo run or vcard-qr and answer the interactive prompts. Most information is optional; in accordance with the VCard spec, technically only a name is required, but you probably want to specify at least an email or a phone number. If you want, you can also specify:

• A website.
• An address or addresses.
• A custom note.

Once you've been thoroughly prompted, the program will render your VCard to the disk. By default it's formatted as a 1024x1024 PNG, but this is configurable - see below.

Configuration

There are a few arguments you can change from the default to tweak the final output:

• -o/--output-name - the name of the output file, sans extension. Defaults to vcard.
• -f/--format - the output format of the QR code, either png or svg. Defaults to png.
• -e/--error-correction - how much error correction should be baked into the QR code - low, medium, high, or max. Higher EC levels will generate larger QR codes, but can increase the chance that the code will remain readable if it's damaged. Defaults to low.
• -s/--size - The height and width of the output image, in pixels. Defaults to 1024.