christo930 said:
Sphinxter said:
Yoyobuae said:
christo930 said:
To the op team: Was the development process anything like what you thought it would be?
*snip*
Sphinxter said:
Pretty much the way I envisioned it.
So you envisioned it taking this long?
Actually thought it might take longer, had cases for this made in China about ten years ago and it did not go as smooth.
http://fullsack.com/cart
You expected everything that has happened? Why the hell did you do it then
?
Did the supermarket thing work out? That actually looks pretty neat.
Yes, well I thought they might have improved a bit, the smart cart project was over 8 years ago. That case and why it's not red is a three beer story, haven't had any tonight. The project after the re-do's went very well after all the internal battles with security and network engineering laughing at the thought of logging into a Linux host and using a firewall you didn't click on from a MS Windows GUI and their dumbfounded stare at it using raw ethernet to get maximum bandwidth since it didn't need to route anywhere forced my partner to completely re-write the reference WI-FI driver to use DMA transfer so the display would stop freezing on every network read at the last bloody minute. Converting a prototype to a diagnostic unit and pushing him around at 7 miles an hour to map the stores dead zones paid off and we overcame all the problems of 802.11b and had 125 chatting happily in a barn at once while shifting from one access point to another in under 3 milliseconds. The surprise of wireless scales in the flower department was conquered even. The target was to add $5 to each cart using the device, an independent market research company verified the device added $10. There were some problems with people leaving them on at the register and cruising across the rough parking lots tending to loosen two of those wedge pressure connectors holding ribbon cables connecting the display and the CF's daughter board, had to fix at least three each store every weekend. They were just a TM-400 palm top reference board with a bunch of unnecessary parts left off and I would have used pins on the full production. We built 250 hard plastic units and a dozen soft prototypes, 125 for each of two stores, one in Cameron Park and one in Moraga, the pilot program ran for six months and as I remember there were less than a dozen units that failed, five by vandalism and six by the connectors wearing out or parts dying. The test ended successfully, was waiting for the green light and despite being the dream of the company president, doubling the target amount in the cart and the very positive exit surveys, the retail market sector slid dropping their stock price down around $18.00 or about 40% and they pulled the plug turning my dream of what could have been a 3.2 million dollar gold mine into a quarter million research project. I still wake up all sweaty screaming, "Why!" every now and then. The press was rather kind and gave it a pretty fair review even though they stupidly stuck the picture of some completely unrelated etch-a-sketch nightly fed coupon dispenser that wasn't even a network device on the stores handout which of course was picked up by slashdot who didn't bother to even read it all and gave credit for my invention to the etch-a-sketch maker in Seattle and vilified me as some sort of enemy of the consumer stealing their souls when in reality I was giving them a terminal view into the the data they already had been giving the store for years. Still don't read slashdot anymore.
Need to add these to the cart's memorial;
http://www.fullsack....rt/SacbeeA1.jpg
http://www.fullsack....rt/SacbeeD4.jpg
Have the first market survey I should transcribe too. We offered $10-12k for the units at the project end but they decided to destroy them instead after a few years in storage, couple dozen missed it and reportedly make great media players. There is a wall display dedicated to them in a museum in The Shadelands, Walnut Creek, California.
Battery life was rather excellent, almost 8 hours. MS and Viewsonic tried to derail me in the middle of construction with their own prototype but that's quite another story.
