Privacy Policy

LinkRay Scanner · last updated 26 September 2026

LinkRay Scanner is a commissioning tool. It measures how a particular phone model’s camera behaves when it looks at a LinkRay (HikariID) light source, and publishes that measurement so other handsets of the same model can decode LinkRay IDs without being configured by hand.

It has no accounts and no login. Nothing it stores is tied to a person, and it does not ask for a name, an email address, a phone number or any other contact detail.

The camera

The app needs camera access, and this is the part worth being precise about:

The camera feed never leaves the phone.Frames are processed on the device by the HikariID SDK to detect a light source and time the camera’s exposure. No photograph or video of what the camera sees is uploaded, stored on our server, or shown to anyone else. What leaves the phone is the result: a set of timing numbers.

What is sent to the server

Device model. The Android model identifier, for example PGFM10 or XQ-DE44, or Apple’s identifier for an iPhone model, for example iPhone19,2. This is the whole point of the app: a measurement is only useful if it says which model it describes. It identifies a model of phone, not a phone and not a person.
Camera timing measurements. Exposure and frame timing values produced by a calibration sweep. On an iPhone, calibration also records the iOS version and, for each attempt, brightness and stripe-spacing figures the meter computed from the frames — numbers, not images — so a failed calibration can be diagnosed.
Scan diagnostics. One record per scan attempt — what was tried, whether it decoded, and the timings in play — with a timestamp set by the server. This exists so a model that fails to scan can be diagnosed later.
Scan ID actions, and any media you attach to them. If you map a LinkRay ID to an action, that mapping is stored. If you attach an image or an MP4 to it, that file is uploaded and served to anyone who scans that ID. These are files you pick deliberately from a file chooser — the app never uploads media on its own.

Because there is no login, every record is stored as anonymous. There is no user id, advertising id, or device serial in any of them.

What is never collected

No location, no contacts, no messages, no files other than media you attach yourself, no microphone audio, no advertising identifiers, and no analytics or third-party tracking SDKs of any kind. The app contains no advertising.

Server logs

The web server keeps standard access logs, which include the IP address of each request, for security and troubleshooting. These are ordinary server logs, not linked to anything the app stores.

Where it goes, and who can see it

Everything is sent to a single server operated by us and is not sold, rented, or shared with any third party. Published camera profiles and Scan ID actions are, by design, readable by other users of the app — that is what makes a measurement taken on one phone useful on another. Media you attach to a Scan ID is served to anyone who scans that ID, so do not attach anything you would not publish.

The app also offers Panasonic’s own HikariID apps as downloads. Those are separate applications by a different vendor; installing one puts you under its terms, not this policy.

How long it is kept

Camera profiles are kept until the model is measured again or the profile is deleted, because a profile that disappears breaks scanning for every handset of that model. Scan diagnostics are trimmed automatically as the store grows. Attached media is kept until the Scan ID is removed.

Children

This is a technical tool for people commissioning LinkRay installations. It is not directed at children and collects nothing that would identify one.

Removing something

Three things can be removed from within the app itself, without contacting anyone:

the scan diagnostics for a phone model — the Camera Logs tab has a Forget this model’s log button
a published camera profile, Android or iPhone, from the Configure tab
a Scan ID and its attached media, from the ScanIDs tab

The first two must be done from a phone of the model concerned, since that is the only thing the app can check without accounts. For anything else, or if you cannot reach a handset of that model, email techhatch@piecefuture.com with the device model and roughly when it was recorded, and it will be removed.

Changes

If what the app collects changes, this page changes with it, and the date at the top moves.

Contact

techhatch@piecefuture.com

Open-source software

The iOS app includes SwiftyJSON, used under the MIT licence:

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2017 Ruoyu Fu

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
THE SOFTWARE.

The Android app includes Gson, and both apps include Capacitor and the AndroidX and Kotlin libraries, under the Apache License 2.0 and the MIT licence respectively. Copies of those licences are available from their projects.