With another holiday weekend upon us, perhaps you would like to give your visitors easy access to your WiFi. Instead of having to repeat your SSID, the authentication type, and the password for each person, you could write it down. Even with it written down, you’re not saving them any keystrokes, plus you have the possible typo or misinterpretation of zeros or capital ‘O’ or lower-case ‘l’ and the number one.
To make things easier for your users (at least those using Android devices), you can create a QR code. With a simple scan of the 2-D barcode, the information will be brought into their phone and ready for the connection.
A QR code is a particular type of barcode designed to be able to hold more data than a traditional barcode (e.g. UPC). It stands for Quick Response Code and allows more data to be encoded into a little square with error correction. QR codes are commonly read by smartphones or other mobile devices. Certainly you have seen the funny looking boxes all over the place by now.
To create a QR code with your WiFi settings you can visit either http://qrcode.littleidiot.be/ or http://blog.qr4.nl/QR-Code-WiFi.aspx
Once there, select that you want to create a QR code for WiFi settings. Fill out the form to match your WiFi settings and click the create button.
Once you hit the Create button, it will spit out your barcode below the form. You can then download the image as a PNG, SVG, EPS, or PDF. You can then either print out the barcode for your visitors to use or bring it into a Word document to type out the settings for your non-Android using visitors.
This has worked great for me on my Samsung Galaxy S III with the Barcode Scanner app installed. When you scan over the QR code, you get the SSID and the security information presented nicely with a button “Connect to Network”. Hitting that will automatically transfer the information over to your network connection and, if the QR code was configured correctly, it will successfully connect you to the WiFi network.
As you can see from the top image, you can also use this generator to create a QR code for text, hyperlinks, phone numbers, email addresses, meCards, or vCards. Give it a shot to see if this can make your life easier and more automated. After that, if your phone is NFC-capable, you can check out creating NFC tags that might further automate tasks like tapping an NFC tag on your nightstand that automatically sets your alarm, lowers the volume, reduces the brightness, and makes other preference changes.