[Dx4win] QR-Code

[PY2YP]

On behalf of the author, PY1KN, a suggestion that should be considered 
to the wish list.


73 de PY2YP - Cesar


Automated QSL reading -- a suggestion for software developers

Marcelo Gomes -- PY1KN

ARRL's LOTW is a great thing, saving a lot of work for managers of large 
dx-peditions or big contest stations, as well as active Dxers.

However, paper QSL cards are not going to disappear anytime soon.

Whenever I receive a bunch of QSL cards from the bureau, I have to 
manually enter the other station callsign in my logging software and 
look for matches in my logbook. Then I can take appropriate action, 
marking the QSO as confirmed and marking a QSL for printing.

If you receive a large batch it can take many hours. There must be a 
better way.

Nowadays QR-codes have become ubiquitous, as its an easy way to create 
free format machine readable information.

So, if in addition to the traditional QSO data lines e can add a QR code 
with the same information, the logging software could decode and search 
for matches and take appropriate action.

The best solution would be to set a standard way to write the QSO data. 
I´ve made a simple test, writing 5 QSOs with W1AW, using ";" as field 
separator according to the following pattern:

Callsign

yyyymmdd ;hh:mm; Mhz; band; mode; RS(T); QSL

A sample 5-QSO data in this format would look like

W1AW

20120130;00:10;21.025;15M;CW;599;PSE

20120131;01:22;14.185;20M;SSB;59;PSE

20120317;22:12;10.145;30M;RTTY;599;TKS

20120401;10:00;;12M;PSK31;599;PSE

20120718;23:18;7.023;40M;CW;599;PSE

Note that the 4^th QSO has no frequency info, just the band. In this 
case the blank fiels results in 2 adjacent separators (;;)

The resulting QR-Code image is example would be:

This image could be added to my outgoing QSL to W1AW. A QSL printing 
service like GlobalQSL could generate it automatically from the QSO data 
uploaded and print it directly in the card.

The printing routines of the logging programs could include the option 
to print it on a blank space of the card, or on a label,

A QR-image can hold up to 255 characters, if we consider typical line 
with the formatting I used as holding 36 characters, there is space to 
easily fit 8 QSOs in the image. I have tried to use a leaner format, 
eliminating the frequency information, the hour-minute separator (:), 
the M abbreviation in the band and use only P or T for QSL status, link 
the example below, but the gain is not relevant, especially if we 
consider that plain text information also has to appear in the card. In 
practice, we don't see more than 7 QSO lines in a card.

WIAW

20120401;1000;160;RTTY;599;P

(example of more condensed formatting)

The first software developer who jumps into this will set the standard. 
Maybe we don't need the frequency information, maybe we can just write P 
or T for the QSL PSE or TKS.

Time will tell if this idea evolves.

-- 
73 DX de PY2YP - Cesar