Wi-Fi QR code stand

This is not a QR code that opens a page with the password written on it. It is a QR code that contains the network credentials in a standard format phones have understood for years. The customer opens the camera, points it at the stand, and the phone offers to join the network. They accept, and that is the end of it.

No app to install, for you or for them. The iPhone camera has handled this format since iOS 11 and Android since version 10 — on older handsets, Google Lens takes over. In practice, virtually every phone in circulation can do it.

What you gain is the end of a ritual: the customer asks for the code, someone hunts for the piece of paper, spells out « capital B, underscore, zero or letter O? », and the customer gets it wrong twice. At a counter, that is thirty seconds lost every time, and a queue building up behind.

On an open network with a captive portal, one piece of information is enough: the network name, the SSID, exactly as it appears in the list of networks. If your network is protected, add its password. Nothing else is required to produce the QR code.

One thing deserves your attention: case matters. « CafeDuPort » and « cafeduport » are two different networks as far as a phone is concerned, and a password copied out with one capital too many will not work. The safest route is to copy and paste from your router's admin page rather than retype it from memory.

Tell us too whether your network is hidden — that is, whether it fails to appear in the list of available networks — because the encoding differs and a code made without that detail would connect nobody. If your password contains characters such as ; : , or \, flag them: they need particular handling, which we apply, but we have to know they are there.

Before production starts, we send you the QR code to test with your own phone. You scan it, check that the connection goes through, and approve. Nobody wants to discover a code that does not work on fifty stands already delivered.

Let us start with what many suppliers leave unsaid: if the network is password-protected, that password sits inside the QR code. Anyone who scans it obtains it, and some apps will even display it in clear text. That is not a flaw in the method, it is how it works.

Hence the setup we recommend: an open guest network paired with a captive portal. The QR code then encodes nothing but the network name, the phone joins immediately, and the portal takes over — that page which opens by itself and asks the visitor to accept the terms before internet access is granted.

This arrangement settles both reservations at once. There is no password to leak, because there is no password. And more importantly, you can change anything without remaking the stands: access rules, session length, the message shown — all of it is driven from the portal, while the QR code itself never changes.

The portal also brings what a password never will: a branded page as the customer arrives, the ability to have terms of use accepted, a speed or time limit so one visitor cannot monopolise the line, and a record of connections, which providing public access generally requires. Most business routers and commercial access points handle this natively.

If you would rather keep a password, that works too and the QR code performs just as well — with two precautions. Never encode your main network: the one carrying your till, your back-office computer or your cameras has no business on a table, so set up a separate guest network. And bear in mind that the day you change that password, the stands will have to be remade.

The medium is a wooden stand that sits on a table or a counter, holds itself upright and does not tip over at the first stray elbow. It is an object people look at: on a café table, it sits exactly where the eye lands when someone settles in and wonders what to do next.

The artwork is yours: your logo, your colours, the wording you want. « Free Wi-Fi », « Connect here », the name of the house — your call. We start from your identity and only make sure the QR code stays large enough and contrasted enough to be read first time, including in a dimly lit room.

Both uses fit on the same face: the Wi-Fi QR code on the left, a second QR code on the right opening your Google review page. The customer connects on arrival, and the second code is already in front of them when the bill comes — nothing to turn round, nothing to look for. Two uses, one object on the table.

Sizes follow those of our other products, from a small tabletop format up to a large counter stand. As with any bespoke run there is a minimum order, and the unit price falls with quantity — a venue equipping twenty tables pays noticeably less per piece than one ordering three.

Cafés and coworking spaces get the clearest benefit: their customers come to work, the connection is the first thing they look for, and asking at the counter interrupts service. One stand per table, and the question disappears.

In waiting rooms — surgeries, garages, law firms — the effect is different: Wi-Fi does not bring people in, but it makes a forty-minute wait markedly less painful. It is a detail patients notice, and one that surfaces in reviews.

Hotels and guest houses put it in the room rather than at reception: that is where guests settle and open a laptop. And for a restaurant, the value depends on the service — few people think of it during an evening sitting, but on a daytime terrace it earns its place.

If you let a whole property rather than welcome the public, the stand is the wrong object: look instead at the NFC plate for Airbnb hosts, which brings the Wi-Fi and the house manual together on a page you edit remotely.