faabapp Posted January 28, 2014 Posted January 28, 2014 I am planning to use osc 2.3.3.4 in a stand alone kiosk.It will be located at malls and will be unattended.I need to know if there is anyway to change it so i dont have to have a keyboard there for customers to register.I am using a modified vending machine and a keyboard would be a real hassel and cumbersome.The touchscreen/osc front page works great , just no need for keyboard.Thanks for any help you can offer.Phillip
MrPhil Posted January 28, 2014 Posted January 28, 2014 Look at add-ons like "Purchase Without Account". Note that almost as much information needs to be typed in (e.g., name, shipping address, credit card number, etc.) as when setting up an account, so you will of course need some way to type in text. A virtual keyboard (touch screen) is a possibility, but is independent of whether you use PWA.
faabapp Posted January 28, 2014 Author Posted January 28, 2014 The whole point is to eliminate any user having to type anything. The touchscreen is all that is needed to navigate untill you get to check out.there has to be a way to bypass the login/reg and go from cart to payment. i have tried pwa add ons and none work with 2334. Any suggestions would be appreciated.Phillip
MrPhil Posted January 28, 2014 Posted January 28, 2014 If this is a "modified vending machine" (no shipping of product), where exactly does osC fit in to the picture? Are you allowing customers to read details of a product before purchase? I would think that could easily be done without all the overhead of a shopping cart, etc. Are you looking to combine multiple items on one credit card payment?
faabapp Posted January 29, 2014 Author Posted January 29, 2014 We have a wall of bins that have product in them.A customer will purchase what they want and after they swipoe their cc/dc the bin that has what they bought will open so they can take it.We have a card reader that will generate reciept and no cash excepted.We use OSC as the interface for the data base and all the wonderful things it does.There is no shipping, we need no personal info other than their cc info. We use osc and our controller to open bins. It is a very simple design and amazon.com uses the same idea for delivering product.It is an established business and a way to expand without brick and mortor. We would appreciate any advice.Plan is to bypass create acct, straight on to insert card. phillip
faabapp Posted January 29, 2014 Author Posted January 29, 2014 Posted Today, 12:39 PM If this is a "modified vending machine" (no shipping of product), where exactly does osC fit in to the picture? Are you allowing customers to read details of a product before purchase? I would think that could easily be done without all the overhead of a shopping cart, etc. Are you looking to combine multiple items on one credit card payment? Yes to all of that. thanks/phillip
MrPhil Posted January 29, 2014 Posted January 29, 2014 So walk us through what a typical customer's experience would be. They use a touch screen to search for/read about and select products, accumulate a "shopping cart" of items, make a credit card payment through a dedicated reader (card swipe), and the bins pop open? I presume there is something to let customers know which bin(s) to open (a light comes on and/or the door pops open), and there is something to make sure the customer removes their goods and doesn't put anything back in (trash, a hacked product, a bomb...). If there are many bins spread out over a large wall, I would be concerned about 1) the shopper overlooking a bin they should be emptying, and 2) someone stealing from an opened bin before the shopper can get to it. If the kiosk is small, that shouldn't be a problem. I presume that you could take standard osC and modify it to 1) basically do a PWA (bypass gathering customer information), 2) swap order of payment and shipping pages, 3) payment could be as simple as "swipe your credit card" (would they be required to input their billing address ZIP code or Postal code for confirmation?), 4) shipping could be simplified to "open the door(s) of bins with lit indicators and remove your goods. Please do NOT put anything back in to the bin!". As part of "shipping", you would have the controller unlock/light certain bins, check that it was emptied, and raise a fuss if anything was put in (you should have a camera recording everything in case they stick something nasty into the bin). Finally, print a receipt either after payment or after goods are removed. From a customer viewpoint, they'd probably like to have the receipt immediately after payment, but it would be good to finish the receipt with "all purchased goods removed from bin(s)". It might be a bit of overkill to have to set up a server and browser, rather than just a plain PC program, but the simplicity of PHP coding and HTML interface could outweigh that cost. You have to be sure that customers and hackers cannot break into (interrupt) the browser and use it to get into places they shouldn't be.
tomemedia Posted January 29, 2014 Posted January 29, 2014 Here is a thumbnail of what is going on. Your description is fairly close. Initially, we will have a stand-alone store that is open 24-hours; sometimes it is staffed. A credit card will be needed to enter the store when it is not staffed. There will be at least two customer points of purchase on an in-store network, so we are not overly concerned about Internet security. We have control of all the client machines and the server. The customer interface is a touch screen monitor. We have adapted the code so the touch targets are easy to select. We hope to use a touch screen keyboard so the customer can opt for an email receipt. We have an Authorize.net card-present test account and have experience processing these kind of transactions. We want the shopping experience to be like automated purchase of gasoline or RedBox.com. Make your selection, swipe your card, get the product and leave. OSCommerce assumes the customer will log in to start a purchase and log off afterward. So we not only need to eliminate any obvious log in procedure but if a customer fails to complete the shopping within a reasonable period, we need to clear the cart and set up for a new customer. Our current thoughts are to create a customer account based on the credit card name and the last 4 digits of the card number. If the customer & card already exist, we log the in and proceed with the transaction. If they are not an existing account, we would create an account based on the name & card number. Then we would process the payment. This does no seem like an overly difficult task. To complete the picture, there are multiple vending machine units (cluster of bin) with a varying number of bins. The printed receipt indicated the unit letter (A-Z) and the bin number for each item. Although there is disagreement on our end, we have made provision for a card swipe at each unit. The customer goes to the indicated unit and swipes. The unit is primed for the transaction linked to the card and pops open the bins while the customer is standing in front of the specific unit. We are more concerned about customer mistakes (i.e. taking stuff from the wrong bin) than stealing. The customers are encouraged to close the bin doors. After a bin has been used, it will not become active until it is restocked by a technician. At that time, a laptop is used to enter inventory and get bin assignments for the products. Bin selection is under program and determined by product size. We plan to use a product attribute to contain a string of characters which identifies unit/bin location. As items are sold, we remove a bin location from the attribute string. OSCommerce may be over-kill but it leaves open the possibility to use the same system and databases for online shopping. RedBox allows user to browse the content of a "store" and reserve DVDs to be picked up later. We could imagine that kind of operation in this case. We could also allow customers to shop from a larger database of online items and have the order scheduled for pickup at the store. Amazon is testing a similar concept to avoid delivery problems where the customer must be present to accept delivery. They have a problem with items coming back after multiple failed deliveries.
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