What the Clock?
The QRCode Clock only tells the time when you point your phone's camera at it, making it the most interesting timepiece you'll never use.
Modern technology is great and all, but how many times have you found yourself complaining each day that it makes your life too easy? If you are like most people, that is probably somewhere right around zero times. But YouTuber WhiskeyTangoHotel has found a new way to shove a stick in the spokes of technological progress all the same. True to the phonetic alphabet, WhiskeyTangoHotel has created a truly inexplicable clock that is a contender for the worst timepiece in the world.
The so-called QRCode Clock was made with an ESP32-C3 development board with a small display. It was programmed to show a different QR code on its screen each second. Rather than encoding a web link as they most often do, these QR codes instead encode the current time. So by pointing your smartphone’s camera at the codes, you can see the current time (never mind that your phone already prominently displays the time).
Is the QRCode Clock useful? Absolutely not. Do you need a QRCode Clock? Nope. But is it cool anyway? For sure. So if you want one of your own, check out the project write-up for the full source code of the QRCode Clock.