alistairlees
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The barcode is the single evidence of authority to travel and this must be scanned. Simply looking at a ticket when you could scan it is pointless.
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e-ticket printing size
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RailUK Forums
What have QR codes got to do with train tickets?
That's not a "problem"; when I rebooked a journey the retailer made it clear I should delete the originals. It's the customers responsibility and it's not that difficult.
It's a lot easier than faffing about putting a paper ticket in the post.
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Your eyes can read Aztec codes?
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Wallsendmag
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You really have no idea how barcoded tickets work have you?
Adam Williams
Established Member
> Do people know how small you can print an e-ticket before it gets too small to scan properly?
Some of the answers here are rather unscientific!
UK rail e-Tickets are Aztec barcodes. In practice, they likely won't have a payload > 300 characters & the compression shall be configured in such a way such that generating the 2D barcode requires no more than 49x49 pixels of data (8 layers).
RDG want each pixel to be 0.5mm^2 for consistency, but if you're printing them yourself and willing to gamble on the ability to scan them (and notwithstanding the issues Haywain has pointed out about not allowing for visual checks and the final product you end up with possibly not being considered a full legitimate e-Ticket if it's just the barcode), you can obviously deviate from this on the basis that if the camera is good enough, you can put the barcode closer to it and still have it scanned. Obviously the resolution of your printer is important here - but I think it'll be the camera/scanner being able to focus on the barcode that's realistically the limiting factor rather than the printer. You'll need to consider gatelines too, and obviously you can't go any closer than putting the barcode on the glass.
I don't work for a TOC, but I believe a number of them use a product built by a company called The Ticket Keeper for mobile e-Ticket validation on the train. These will either do on-device (I believe ZXing-powered - on Android at least) scanning, or use a Bluetooth handheld scanner. Not sure who manufactures the handheld scanners, but if you could find out you could probably do some further research on how good these are at scanning smaller Aztec codes.
Some of the answers here are rather unscientific!
UK rail e-Tickets are Aztec barcodes. In practice, they likely won't have a payload > 300 characters & the compression shall be configured in such a way such that generating the 2D barcode requires no more than 49x49 pixels of data (8 layers).
RDG want each pixel to be 0.5mm^2 for consistency, but if you're printing them yourself and willing to gamble on the ability to scan them (and notwithstanding the issues Haywain has pointed out about not allowing for visual checks and the final product you end up with possibly not being considered a full legitimate e-Ticket if it's just the barcode), you can obviously deviate from this on the basis that if the camera is good enough, you can put the barcode closer to it and still have it scanned. Obviously the resolution of your printer is important here - but I think it'll be the camera/scanner being able to focus on the barcode that's realistically the limiting factor rather than the printer. You'll need to consider gatelines too, and obviously you can't go any closer than putting the barcode on the glass.
I don't work for a TOC, but I believe a number of them use a product built by a company called The Ticket Keeper for mobile e-Ticket validation on the train. These will either do on-device (I believe ZXing-powered - on Android at least) scanning, or use a Bluetooth handheld scanner. Not sure who manufactures the handheld scanners, but if you could find out you could probably do some further research on how good these are at scanning smaller Aztec codes.
Not a lot, but people tend to use the term 'QR' for all 2D codes. I just tried my 'QR Reader' Android app on some Aztec codes. It read them fine.
They are very different; if someone gets confused on this forum and refers to an Aztec code as a QR code, please use the report button.
Ok so you have software that reads both Aztec and QR codes, but you won't be able to read the Aztec codes on railway tickets as they are encrypted, unless you have the key to decrypt them?
py_megapixel
Established Member
I don't really think you can "encrypt" a barcode (whatever that would mean) so that it's actually unreadable without a key. You can have a barcode that stores data which has been encrypted, but there's nothing stopping you reading that data. It will just look like gibberish because, of course, it's encrypted.
Indeed, the (Aztec) encoded data is not plain text. All you learn is that you have a readable Aztec code.
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