https://codeberg.org/blast/blastqr
Hello! I’ve been working on blastQR for a couple of years now and I thought this community might find it useful. Feel free to try it and ask me anything!
blastQR is a fully open-source file transfer app and protocol that works completely offline. You can even use it in airplane mode. Data is transferred through sequences of QR codes displayed on a sender device and scanned by a receiver device’s camera. It uses RaptorQ codes so the receiver can recover the file from any sufficiently large subset of frames.
Note that although I have made use of AI as a coding assistant I do not consider this to be a vibe-coded app and I do plan to continue improving it and supporting it in the future.
See video of blastQR in action: https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/038a2567-70c8-47c8-b165-dea858d1aef3
Here are some of the key features:
- Works fully offline: No internet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or servers. Your data stays offline.
- One-to-many distribution: Share the same file with multiple devices simultaneously using a single blastQR broadcast.
- Cross-platform: Android, iOS, macOS, Linux and Windows, plus a command-line tool that can send from a terminal, even over SSH.
- Password encryption: You can optionally encrypt files with an auto-generated password or a custom one.
- Media compression: The app supports lossy image compression and video transcoding for quicker transfers.
- Multiple codes on screen: Shows multiple QR codes at once for higher speed. With 8 codes at 60 fps, transfers peak at around 1.4 MB/s.
- Send multiple files in one go: They’re zipped into one transfer and unpacked into separate files on the receiver.
- Sound feedback: The receiver plays a short tone when it has the whole file, and the sender stops automatically when it hears it.
- Start scanning at any point: No need to catch every code, just keep the camera on the screen until it’s done. Blurry or missed codes don’t matter.
- Regular QR scanner: You can also scan normal QR codes and save them.
- Open protocol that other apps can implement
- Built-in file manager
I’m trying to build a small community around the project so it can be improved and maintained and so it can reach more people in the future.
Downloads for all platforms can be found here: https://codeberg.org/blast/blastqr/releases/latest
Whats the advantage over bluetooth, local ftp serverr/hotspot and other wifi sharing methods?
The advantage is it doesn’t need any of those
What if you only have a camera?
New conduit for kiddy pics.
I am thinking that maybe adding color would allow you to condense a lot more information into a QR code. It would be good if we can have entire programs and media reconstructed just from scanning QRs.
For those asking about RGB, there are a few reasons why QR codes work better for now:
- Black and white still reads fine in bad lighting or on cheap cameras. Phones are very optimized for scanning QRs so it’s more reliable and less error prone.
- Video compression, colors shifting with white balance, screen type, all of those make it harder to tell colors apart so you need more aggressive error correction. The real gain ends up smaller than it sounds.
You can already transfer entire (small) programs and media with blastQR btw! Feel free to try and report back. The limit is around 4 GB files but that would take ages.
That said, there is a project called libcimbar that is improving and does work with colors: https://github.com/sz3/libcimbar
Have you considered an RGB mode?
They’ve answered that here now, fyi https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/29305229
I’ve been enjoying this
A very interesting take on a new malware distribution method.
Does this mean an IP cam pointing to a monitor can compromise an air gap? I guess it always could, just at 1.4mbps now
I believe IP cameras usually can’t reach fidelity and frame rate needed for 1.4 mb/s
And yes, programs like this existed, so it always could
So a fun use case you may not have considered is back country GPX sharing. A plugin for Osmand (a very popular FOSS mapping app for back country use) would be neat. Sharing when airplane mode between devices is always needed.
That is a fenomenal idea! I hadn’t thought about it and these are the exact kind of situations it could solve well. I’ll definitely add it to the roadmap. Thank you
Dammit you beat me to it especially if you make it nfc capable too. Wink wink hint hint
Seems finicky. Keeping the camera and screen aligned during the transfer. Someone should research if it’s possible for two phones to send data acoustically. Then they don’t need to be kept perfectly aligned. Hell, they could even transfer data over a phone call or something.
Oh my you would be so excited that this exists. Someone made an SMS app that works over audio, I played around with my friend and it works so well actually
QR codes have error correction built in
I do miss the demon screaming of modems.
Is this the future version of holding two phones together to transmit files via infrared?
Coming full circle!
Note that although I have made use of AI as a coding assistant I do not consider this to be a vibe-coded app
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What KIND of AI did you use? Was it a local model or a cloud sourced one?
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Where exactly and what exactly was the AI used on?
OP answered it here:
Not sure if I’m okay with it, then. Cloud models tend to suck up data, so they probably have some kind of idea of how it works. This is why I tend to only be okay with stuff that was vibe-coded with Local LLMs.
Sucked up the publicly available open source code, oh noooo, yeah, that’s definitely a reason to not be okay with it.
It’s open source. Anyone who is curious can find out exactly how it works.
That’s valid, I simply appreciate that OP has been forthcoming about the usage and how it was applied.
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Reminds of removedat, odd but apparently used in india because their goverment is lowkey evil again?
Bit chat got Scunthorped
An interesting name _removed_at is /j
Luigi Mangione did everything for society correctly (its bit chat fyi not a swear in the name)
I started working on something like this years ago, but I didn’t have the coding skills to pull it off. This is really awesome.
Neither does he.
It’s not that hard. Loop the QR, index the frames without the QR payload, do it ~10fps so you account for camera error, then when all frames/packets are completed, you’re good. There’s a ton of QR scanning libraries out there already.
Yeah, we get it, he used AI. You anti-AI absolutists aren’t actually changing anyone’s minds with this behavior, and it actually seems to be annoying a lot of people in to the opposite direction.
The tech or “tool” as you guys like to call it is the issue. Even if you use it the best way you could you still used a tool created by stealing. You guys can’t see past the next 2 years. I will be laughing my ass up in 5 years when all of you are forced to pay 1k a month just to function.
Literally just “leftists are right but annoying so I’m a fascist now :(” enabler behavior applied to AI.
Being angry also works better in real life in my experience. I think the people who constantly ask others to soften up are opps
Note that although I have made use of AI as a coding assistant this is not a vibe-coded app
Can you elaborate more on how AI was used?
For context, I’m a software developer with around 15 years of experience. Most of it writing Android and iOS apps in Java, Kotlin, Swift and lately Dart (Flutter) + Rust which is what this project is written in.
Although I did start the project from scratch I have lately been using Claude Code as a coding assistant. I write code myself but I also let it write or refactor parts of it. The CLI tool is the part that Claude has mostly written from scratch because it’s not something I had experience in writing before. That being said I also review all the code that Claude writes.
Thanks for asking! there’s also some disclosure about this in the readme file
Thanks for being honest and open about it
The CLI tool is the part that Claude has mostly written from scratch because it’s not something I had experience in writing before.
This seems like the perfect opportunity to learn something new in my opinion, CLIs aren’t difficult to make. And you may want to consider moving to GitHub because of Codeberg’s ToS.
I totally agree and I’m very open to welcome anyone who wants to rewrite that part or I might go for it myself in the future. The reason I went for it is that I really wanted to be able to use the CLI tool right away and the AI produced a good result so I left it in the project for now.
About Codeberg I did read their blog post and I didn’t think my project falls into any of the cases they mention:
spoiler
Projects that are created by LLM “agents” in autonomous ways Projects written and maintained with heavy use of LLMs Projects where the amount of resources (e.g. storage, CI/CD) is significantly larger than what the involved amount of people could have created by hand Projects heavily tied to the LLM ecosystem, e.g. LLM-written tools to ease LLM usage Users sending LLM contributions in violation of project’s custom policies
If they ever consider it infringing their ToS I could move it to GitHub where there’s already a mirror of the repo.
