Why a printed code is the best scan target
We rank scan items on our scan item guide, and a printed code taped up comes top for two reasons.
- It lasts indefinitely. A kettle lasts years, a shampoo bottle lasts weeks, and a toothpaste tube lasts until you buy a different one with a different barcode. A printed code outlives all of them.
- You choose the location exactly. With household objects you are limited to where things happen to live. With a printed code you can put the target in the precise spot you want to be standing at 6:30.
The trade-off is that it is one more thing to set up, and in a bathroom it needs laminating or taping properly, because paper and steam are not friends.
Where to put it, in order
- The bathroom. A doorway crossed, bright light, and you are already at the start of your routine. The strongest all-round choice.
- By the kettle or coffee machine. Your next action is queued up, which makes going back to bed feel like an interruption rather than a decision.
- Inside a kitchen cupboard. Walking, opening and looking is three small acts of waking rather than one.
- The back of the front door. Effective if your problem is missing a commute. Slightly brutal.
Avoid anywhere visible from the bed, anywhere you can reach by leaning, and anywhere you will resent walking to in winter.
The mistake almost everyone makes
People pick somewhere genuinely difficult, the garage or a top shelf or another floor, on the theory that harder is better. It works for about four days. Then one morning you are ill, or it is freezing, or you simply resent it, and you delete the app.
Aim for one room away. The setup you keep using beats the one that was theoretically stronger.
Printing notes
- Print it large. The Print button lays each code out at about 90 mm square, which scans quickly in poor light. Shrinking it to save paper is a false economy at 6 a.m.
- Laminate or tape it well for a bathroom. A curling, damp code scans slowly, and slow scanning is what makes people give up on the whole idea.
- Do not keep a photo of the code on your phone. For obvious reasons.
- Print backups for different rooms. The point of a backup is covering the case where the primary is gone or unreachable, so a backup taped next to the primary is not a backup.
What the code contains
A short unique string, something like MORNIO-BATHROOM-K7Q2M9. There is nothing personal in it and nothing about you encoded in it. The random part exists so that two people who both label theirs “Bathroom” do not end up with codes that could be swapped.
If you register it in Mornio, the app stores a salted one-way hash of the code plus the label you choose, on your iPhone. It does not keep a photo of the code or its readable value, and there is no account and no server for it to sync to. The detail is in the Privacy Policy and in is scanning a barcode private.
Test it before you rely on it
Set an alarm for one minute from now, let it actually ring, and walk to the code in the light you will really have at that hour. A bathroom that is bright at 3 p.m. is a different proposition at 5 a.m. Full procedure in how to test an alarm app.