I remember we had this panel in the lunch room that you can use your key fob to buy stuff with.
Can we implement the same concept at the lasers?
Things worth implementing:
Login/Logout - this allows us to track usage
Laser time - this allows us to monitor actual laser tube usage and lifespan
Stretch goal - digital payment/invoicing
Since these machines are very expensive and replacement parts are also expensive, it is worth thinking about this.
The other day I was in using lasersaur (btw the QRCode thing is not on the wall anymore…) and there was a fellow using the other machine. he would let the lid slam shut with a big BAM… Maybe it slipped or I dont know, but I raised my head and kinda like “wtf” look. I mental noted that if he did it again I’d politely ask him to handle with care.
Don’t forget that the kiosk that tracked the old snack room was NOT linked to actually paying. It was literally an electronic tally system. If someone is cheating the system already, putting a mandatory electronic tally system will not solve your problem - the true solution would be to integrate payment into the laser machine itself (good luck).
Depending on how the membership database is set up, it would not be very difficult to write a (public) REST API to be able to query the database based on the hash of keyfob IDs.
This actually isn’t hard to do at all if we can make something that is web based. I have setup a couple of payment gateways for websites and Paypal years ago and I only see Paypal’s Developer Site getting better and easier to use.
Price is on the white board next to the Lasersaur - $1 for 5 minute increment [rounding total time UP to nearest 5 minute increment]. Used to be $2 for 10 minute increments.
This sounds like it could be a useful Infrastructure project for more than just the Laser. I think the current RFID tag system may be pretty limited and a bit dated though and this use case may require an upgrade in that area as well.
Facts:
We have a member portalit has a member databaseWe have a keycard database because it knows my badge is connected to me.It also knows i have a paid membership.
Probably all that is a hosted solution.
Connect some dotsI too am a web developer so im familiar with the dots
Sent from my LG G2, an AT&T 4G LTE smartphone
For work I come across applications where we need to pull information or data between databases. I am sure there are more elegant ways, but most of the stuff I work on isn’t elegant so we use ODBC or other connectors.
I am more familiar with MySQL/SQL databases… I am sure those of us who can… can put our heads together to come up with a solution.
*Oh and one of the services my company offers is card access (RFID readers and mag locks etc.).
We have deployment and schema problems that make it a lot more difficult than it all seems. As an example, we don’t even know the names of family members and which RFID badges assigned to a member vs badges assigned to a family member. For instance, from our database, you can’t tell me my brother’s name or which badge is his and which is mine.
If this stuff was as easy as it seems, we would have done it. I will try to document the system when I get back in town after the weekend and identify the problems. Right now the infrastructure guys are mostly busy with moving things to AWS.
Ive seen worse. My first development gig out of the military was to convert an email based domain ordering and provisioning system into a web based CRM system. 20K domains a month via email filters and triggers lol.