Any arduino-type experts?

[Landlord]

Hi,

I would like to build something that will allow my bar staff to press a simple button(s) (on a touch screen) to record when a particular barrel was put on/taken off.

In my head, it’ll just be a small (2.8”?) touchscreen with up to 8 buttons. These buttons just need to display the name of beer and effectively “toggle”. When pressed, it will write a timestamp along with the button name to a text file (either via USB or to an SD card – whichever is easier/workable).

Now – I don’t really know where to start but I’ve heard of Arduino (and compatibles) which I think should do the trick. Does this sound right?

The buttons will need to be dynamically loaded/refreshed and the names of the buttons will be sourced from text file (again, either via USB or SD card). The buttons would need to toggle (simply by changing the colour) based on their “state”.

Hopefully that makes sense to someone – who could point me to a suitable board, plus any other things I haven’t thought about. It, to my mind, seems a pretty simple thing to do. Is an Arduino the right thing to be considering?

Any ideas/help would be massively appreciated!

[eharding]

You could do this with an Arduino, but I'd say a Raspberry Pi might be more appropriate and accessible. Using a Pi would make it easier to expand the system to, say, send you a text or email when a barrel has been changed, or when it seems likely a barrel needs to be changed.

[Landlord]

eharding said:

You could do this with an Arduino, but I'd say a Raspberry Pi might be more appropriate and accessible. Using a Pi would make it easier to expand the system to, say, send you a text or email when a barrel has been changed, or when it seems likely a barrel needs to be changed.

Thanks for the reply. I really don't need anything more than recording a timestamp and to review these stamps weekly/monthly. I intend to do this review by opening the text file (probably CSV) in Excel. I'll do the "post-processing" in there as I'm an Excel developer by trade.

I'd also rather do this as cheaply as possible (purely because it doesn't need to be that smart) so the extra expense of the Pi (and processing power) just wouldn't be justified

[eharding]

Landlord said:

eharding said:

You could do this with an Arduino, but I'd say a Raspberry Pi might be more appropriate and accessible. Using a Pi would make it easier to expand the system to, say, send you a text or email when a barrel has been changed, or when it seems likely a barrel needs to be changed.

Thanks for the reply. I really don't need anything more than recording a timestamp and to review these stamps weekly/monthly. I intend to do this review by opening the text file (probably CSV) in Excel. I'll do the "post-processing" in there as I'm an Excel developer by trade.

I'd also rather do this as cheaply as possible (purely because it doesn't need to be that smart) so the extra expense of the Pi (and processing power) just wouldn't be justified

Fair enough - but I think the bulk of the expense would be in the LCD screen rather than the processor - and in fact you can get a Pi Mini for £4.66, and the cheapest Arduino Uno clone I could find was £4.98. You can get cheaper Arduino boards (£2-£3 if you look around) but you'd need to get your soldering iron out to connect them to a screen. At the Uno / Pi Mini price point you can get stackable add on boards ('Shields' in Arduino terms, 'Hats' in Pi speak) with a variety of components, including touch screens, which will connect directly without the need to start soldering. But we're only talking about a couple of quid difference. With an Arduino, you'd probably also need an SD or USB shield as well.

[Landlord]

eharding said:

Fair enough - but I think the bulk of the expense would be in the LCD screen rather than the processor - and in fact you can get a Pi Mini for £4.66, and the cheapest Arduino Uno clone I could find was £4.98. You can get cheaper Arduino boards (£2-£3 if you look around) but you'd need to get your soldering iron out to connect them to a screen. At the Uno / Pi Mini price point you can get stackable add on boards ('Shields' in Arduino terms, 'Hats' in Pi speak) with a variety of components, including touch screens, which will connect directly without the need to start soldering. But we're only talking about a couple of quid difference. With an Arduino, you'd probably also need an SD or USB shield as well.

Ah - that's interesting. I thought the Pi was about £30 compared to the £5-ish of an Arduino. I'll take a look at the Pi Mini and the 'hats'

[timmymagic73]

As per post above, I'd say a Raspberry Pi is probably the best and simplest way to achieve this, with something like a 2.8" Waveshare LCD shield stacked on top connected via SPI. In a suitable beer/drink proof enclosure!

The Pi is only £30 or so and it lends itself more to the kind of UI you're looking for. I think it's a little more complicated that your initial post, you'd need to handle false button presses/mistakes and so-on, some kind of yes-no confirmation might be helpful.

[deckster]

Seems way over-complicated. Arduinos and Pis are great if you want to tinker with hardware but you're having to do an awful lot of manual work for very little gain here. You're also focussing on the hardware, when actually it's the software you need to be thinking about.

For my money - a cheap tablet, Google Sheets, and a few macros is the easiest way to solve this.

[nyt]

You can buy a complete board that has everything (including a small display) that you need.
Something like https://www.amazon.co.uk/MakerHawk-ESP8266-Develop...

You would have to provide a case and a button (easily connected) as it's not a touch screen.
Example button: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ytian-Round-Momentary-But...

The only downside is that it doesn't have an SD card. You'd have to write to a central file using the built in wifi.

ETA: there are examples on youtube of how to directly update a google sheet from one of these devices. That should ease your workflow.

Edited by nyt on Tuesday 19th March 11:40

[Landlord]

deckster said:

Seems way over-complicated. Arduinos and Pis are great if you want to tinker with hardware but you're having to do an awful lot of manual work for very little gain here. You're also focussing on the hardware, when actually it's the software you need to be thinking about.

For my money - a cheap tablet, Google Sheets, and a few macros is the easiest way to solve this.

That's plan b. I have a cheap Windows 10 tablet already plus Office so I can write the software in Excel myself. However, I was after having a much smaller screen than the tablet has. Space is very limited.

[Landlord]

nyt said:

You can buy a complete board that has everything (including a small display) that you need.
Something like https://www.amazon.co.uk/MakerHawk-ESP8266-Develop...

You would have to provide a case and a button (easily connected) as it's not a touch screen.
Example button: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ytian-Round-Momentary-But...

The only downside is that it doesn't have an SD card. You'd have to write to a central file using the built in wifi.

ETA: there are examples on youtube of how to directly update a google sheet from one of these devices. That should ease your workflow.

Edited by nyt on Tuesday 19th March 11:40

Thanks for that but the screen is far too small. Plus, the buttons need to be flexible in which barrel/beer they're assigned to. Also, mechanical buttons will suffer with the sticky beer that will undoubtedly be spilled on them!

[thebraketester]

Is there not a function to do this on your POS system?

[Landlord]

thebraketester said:

Is there not a function to do this on your POS system?

No, unfortunately.

[niallf]

What about hacked Amazon Dash buttons?
https://www.alphr.com/amazon/1001429/amazon-dash-b...
No experience of using them and don't know how you stop them ordering stuff from Amazon, but seems a possible solution to your challenge!

[Landlord]

niallf said:

What about hacked Amazon Dash buttons?
https://www.alphr.com/amazon/1001429/amazon-dash-b...
No experience of using them and don't know how you stop them ordering stuff from Amazon, but seems a possible solution to your challenge!

I need up to 8 buttons in a single unit.

[thebraketester]

What about just putting a timer on the actual barrels? IS there a reason it needs to be at the bar?

[Landlord]

thebraketester said:

What about just putting a timer on the actual barrels? IS there a reason it needs to be at the bar?

Yes, ease of collating the information. The cellar is relatively inaccessible.

[deckster]

So have you written those excel macros and tried it out on that spare tablet yet? You could gone from initial prototype to at least release 3 in the time you've been asking questions...

Slightly joking of course, but anybody remotely associated with corporate IT will be very familiar with the kind of analysis-paralysis that is going on in this thread and the commensurate lack of anything actually being done about the problem at hand! Quite seriously, a couple of hours spent now knocking up something that looks a little bit like what you have in your head will tell you a lot about what the end solution should be.

[Dave.]

deckster said:

Seems way over-complicated. Arduinos and Pis are great if you want to tinker with hardware but you're having to do an awful lot of manual work for very little gain here. You're also focussing on the hardware, when actually it's the software you need to be thinking about.

For my money - a cheap tablet, Google Sheets, and a few macros is the easiest way to solve this.

This, this and thrice this.

Nexus 7 from eBay for £20, an hour to set it up, job jobbed...

deckster said:

Analysis-paralysis

[eliot]

I prefer arduino's because they are essentially solid state - once the code is on there that's it. PI's run an operating system and unless things have changed since i last played with them, suffered from corrupted file systems if you didn't shut them down properly.

Having said that, as above a tablet and some macros may get you were you need to be quicker.

[Dave.]

ash73 said:

I think I'd literally die of boredom implementing that option.

Do you struggle with other such trivial daily tasks?

Like taking a dump, do you make that into an X-games type event?