Magnus ~ As to "mixing up two different things a bit" ...yes and no: The original poster wanted an open source software solution that worked with the 3M equipment [ #1 in your list ] to reanimate a glitchy 3M station and protect the not insubstantial $$ investment [ system restore would've helped here perhaps, or uninstalling the guilty Windows updates? Don't know. ]. So the problem is keeping the [ now glitchy ] 3M hardware/equipment investment up and going. He says: As we 're going to upgrade our Koha installation to 3.12, we want to use
an open source system to replace the software of the self check. Does anyone has some experience for an easy-to-install free software with that hardware ?
In theory, you could turn the 3M station/equipment into a browser based kiosk using the Koha self-check module [ #2 in your list ] ...it's just a computer with Windows, touchscreen and scanner in some special furniture anyway. We *did* try re-purposing our old 3M equipment using FOSS, mostly for kicks ~ and failed. Mainly due to driver issues between things like the 3M touchscreen and the OS. Could be avoided *possibly* if you stuck with the existing OS on the equipment. You'd still have issues with software needing to talk to the security strip "desensitizer". It may be possible, for instance, to install FOSS kiosk software or browser plugins and continue to use the 3M kiosks, as they just run Windows XP behind the scenes ...if you didn't care about the security strips, that is. We opted to just replace them with generic off-the-shelf components instead as our 3M equipment was a bit long in the tooth and ready for retirement anyway. An ideal solution, for this poster, would retain *all* functionality of the original 3M kiosk [ RFID, security strips ], use the existing equipment ...and run on FOSS partially or entirely. Easy installation a plus. I can only share our experiences and wish him luck. Chad On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 2:29 AM, Magnus Enger <magnus@enger.priv.no> wrote:
I wonder... Is this discussion mixing up two different things a bit?
For me, "self check" in relation to Koha can mean (at least) two different things:
1. A self check "station" that runs dedicated software, and that communicates with Koha via SIP2
2. Some computer running a browser, possible locked down to "kiosk mode" and possibly with a touch screen, that is set to display the "self check web interface" of Koha, as described here: http://manual.koha-community.org/3.12/en/selfcheckout.html
Or is everyone just talking about one of those?
Best regards, Magnus Enger libriotech.no
On 25 September 2013 22:52, Chad Roseburg <croseburg@ncrl.org> wrote:
A colleague of mine tried to get our selfcheck iso installed on our 3M equipment without success. You should be able to install it fine on the computer tower but it's the peripheral components like the 3M scanner, touchscreen and readers that are the issue. To be honest I don't remember where we left off with that other than we abandoned it due to some component not working properly. I will email him and ask what worked and what didn't.
Chad
On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 1:11 PM, Daniel Berthereau < Daniel.koha@berthereau.net> wrote:
Hi,
On our selfcheck kiosk, all devices (rfid, printer, scanner, tactile screen) work well on Windows, the problem is the 3M software. I don't try if they work on Debian, but I can check if your Iso runs.
Sincerely,
Daniel Berthereau
I use remastersys, much like the Live Koha DVD to deploy and image selfchecks. I could make this available as a downloadable iso if anyone was interested trying it out. It would require some site specific changes of course. I have quite a bit of documentation for it, but it is missing a beginner's setup guide for making the site specific changes currently.
It is designed for touchscreens and receipt printing out of the box using Epson T88IV or T88V printers. A Star TSP would work with some
On 25/09/2013 20:59, Chad Roseburg wrote: post-install
drivers.
We have 2 in our branches that do over 1300 and 2300 transactions each month. I have not updated them for Wheezy yet.
Chad
On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 10:12 AM, glaws <glawson@rhcl.org> wrote:
We do also try to remember that not everybody can do a configure, make, make install, to install software. Some small libraries without tech support staff simply would be unable to use some software if it weren't on a CD or easily downloadable. For these sites I think it makes good sense to just master a Linux .iso that can be installed and "just work". If library staff have to install Linux anyway, then a pre-configured "Library Kiosk" or "Self-checkout" distro is probably simpler than creating packages, again, for those users who need to minimize their exposure to synaptic or apt-get.
Greg ---------------------------------------------
On 09/25/2013 10:45 AM, glaws wrote:
I'm not aware there currently exists an open source self-checkout system, however we've long talked about it here at our library. I work with a developer, Aaron Ogle, that is currently building a PAC system, and when he is finished with that if we have the funds available I would like to consider funding a self-checkout development. Having already discussed it, we think it wouldn't be terribly difficult. Aaron already has a generalized framework for similar systems (a children's playstation and a Koha kiosk) that could be easily adapted to a checkout.
I should note probably that all the development we support is for open operating systems, and all the funding we've done so far generally uses Linux Mint at the client end. The server side, where utilized, is more generalized, but we typically use Ubuntu and OpenSuse.
Unfortunately it seems that you need a system now, and anything we do won't be worked on until at least mid- late-2014. This is, however, a good discussion topic and worth continuing.
Greg
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