[hackerspaces] [ANNOUNCE] brmbar - platform for tiny hackerspace snack shops

[Petr Baudis]

  Hi!

  In our hackerspace (brmlab), we have a tiny self-service shop
(we call it "brmbar") with snacks, Club Mate, some Arduino and RPi
boards etc; we also allow members to pay some bulk money in advance,
then purchase stuff without paying for individual items.

  Our shop has went through quite an evolution from completely
pen-and-paper with large cardboard price list to our current digital
system with touchscreen interface.  I have figured that our current
system might be interesting for folks in other hackerspaces as well,
so I decided to announce it here.

  We have investigated multiple current solutions but liked none, so we
rolled our own.  Our system has touchscreen + barcode reader optimized
UI, is written in Python (+ QtQuick), runs on Linux and stores its
accounting in PostgreSQL. You can find screenshots, some brief
documentation and link to the source at:

	http://brmlab.cz/project/brmbar

  (Note that while the UI is aimed at the less technical members of our
hackerspace, the system itself is not yet optimized for easy deployment.
At least one person in your hackerspace would need to roughly grok
the code and the database in order to do the initial set of tweaks
and sort out any administrative changes. We'll be happy to help with
any hurdles you might hit and even more to accept patches, though.)


  What solutions do you use if you also run a self-service shop?
Does something like this seem interesting to anyone? Would you know
about other non-hackerspace venues that might appreciate this?

  Happy hacking,

				Petr "Pasky" Baudis