[hackerspaces] Re billing for laser burn hours. Webcam+OCR software.

[James Arthur]

I would be most interested in how you got here, and following your progress.

I can see if I can't get some folks on our end [CEMI.org in Somerville, MA]
interested in helping out.

James

On Sun, Jan 20, 2013 at 12:25 PM, Bob Baddeley <
hackerspace-discuss at bobbaddeley.com> wrote:

> We recently set up a system at Sector67 to handle this issue. We have RFID
> cards for building access already, so we hooked up an RFID reader, Arduino,
> and Raspberry Pi inside our laser cutter. A person swipes their card, which
> checks a web service that has a list of acceptable (trained) users and will
> enable or disable the laser. Our system also logs job time, so we know how
> long each job runs, and we are charging $20 an hour. A camera mounted
> inside the cutter takes a photo at the completion of each job. All of this
> data is stored both on a local database on the Pi and via web services to a
> remote location. We also added a billing token feature, so that a person
> can log in with their personal RFID token, then swipe a second one so they
> can distinguish between different projects for a certain person.
>
> We're currently working on building a better web interface to handle the
> billing and do metrics. It appears that there may be a need for this kind
> of thing at the other spaces as well. We have not yet hooked this up to our
> 3D printers (we have a scale and cash box and formula on the wall for that
> right now), but we may hook this system up to other machines like our CNCs.
> Some we may not charge to use but would like to measure time spent and be
> able to hold people accountable for breaking things.
>
> Is anyone else interested in joining forces to build a billing and
> analytics system for tool usage? Does anyone know of one that already
> exists?
>
> Bob Baddeley
> Sector67
>
>
> On 01/20/2013 03:55 AM, Matt Joyce wrote:
>
>> There are simpler solutions.  This isn't some new problem.
>>
>> On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 6:03 PM, Oren Beck <orenbeck at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Last resort first.
>>>
>>> Webcam and some OCR software.
>>>
>>> Slot for member card in cam vision near hours display.
>>>
>>> Potentially closer to solved?
>>>
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-- 
*James Arthur*
857.318.1866
iam at jamesarthur.info
www.jamesarthur.info
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