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

[Pete Prodoehl]

At Milwaukee Makerspace we have two laser cutters on loan from members. 
They're old and they break down a lot, but we do not charge for usage. 
(We only allow people to use them after they've been approved though.) 
When things break, we pass the hat and raise money to fix them (or 
scrounge parts as needed, like power supplies, air-pumps, etc.) If we 
don't raise enough funds to fix them, they'll sit there unused until we 
do, which will probably prompt people to raise the needed funds.

Pete




On 1/20/13 11:25 AM, Bob Baddeley 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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