Is it practical to have a webcam on the laptop (for Armory cold wallet)?

[RationalSpeculator]

If you want to import a paper wallet for example, via qr code? Or any other situation you were happy with a webcam on that laptop?

[truckingeek]

I've been wondering basically the same thing...if an Android phone can use what amounts to a webcam as a QR scanner, and Android is basically a mobile-optimized Linux distro, why the heck can't I use my Kubuntu laptop's webcam as a QR scanner and have it pass data to any arbitrary app, such as Armory?

Anyone know if ZXIng's scanner is open source?  Might be a simple port, come to think of it.

[CIYAM]

The CIYAM Safe uses this approach although it does not include Armory (you could always add it to your own distro).

http://susestudio.com/a/kp8B3G/ciyam-safe

(being SUSE it is not exactly a minimal live OS)

It uses ZBar (and includes Cheese also in case your cam doesn't work with ZBar as it uses older video libs).

Just realised this is the Armory sub-forum - well I hope no-one sees CIYAM Safe as anything that competes with it (it was really only designed for offline tx's rather than so much as an offline wallet) and if any of the scripts I wrote are of use then welcome to grab them to add to Armory.

[truckingeek]

Given how powerful even the cheapest netbooks are these days, I don't see why you couldn't put a full-fledged Linux distro like Suse or any of the Ubuntus on it.  My old roommate had a little EEE (maybe 2-3 years ago) and it ran Ubuntu like nobody's business.  Honestly the ancient history laptop I'm on now is probably less powerful than a new netbook, and I do Blender animations on it.

Then again, I'm about to spring for a System76 Bonobo.....

[w1R903]

If you want to import a paper wallet for example, via qr code? Or any other situation you were happy with a webcam on that laptop?

qtqr is a nice program for reading qr codes on Ubuntu: https://apps.ubuntu.com/cat/applications/qtqr/

However, I've had trouble with a lot of webcams reading qr codes, probably because of the resolution.  Your mileage may vary.

[CIYAM]

Actually - the only problem I've had is with GPG private keys (they are big enough that you basically have to split them into two).

For simple raw transactions they are fine (even when using Cheese to capture an image and then using ZBar to read that).