Quite often we will get a report from a user in the field saying there was an error in our application. Frequently this leads to the typical round of "What was the error?" "I don't know, it was just an error." We of course log these faults to the log files, and we can even enable detailed debug logs, but this involves the end user changing a setting in the configuration file and then finding the correct files and then emailing them to us. As I'm sure you can all imagine, there are plenty of pitfalls and alligators in this methodology.
Recently a couple of people have used their cell phone to email me a "screen capture" of the fault, and while this helps, we still have to scrutinize the image to find the exact fault, and if enabled, the stack trace.
So this evening, I had the brilliant idea (IMHO) to encode the fault into a Datamatrix barcode image and then encourage users to send me a picture from their cell phone. I can then decode the datamatrix and get a parse-able error message!
Our core technology is machine vision, so the decoding of the datamatrix image would be trivial, I just need to find a method of generating the actual image to display in the fault handler.
Thoughts?
