5 ms·

How robust and dependable is the Raspberry Pi? I've been looking at Electronic Point of Sale (EPOS) systems recently, and as far as I can tell, they're third ra

How robust and dependable is the Raspberry Pi? I've been looking at Electronic Point of Sale (EPOS) systems recently, and as far as I can tell, they're third rate hardware loaded up with fourth rate software selling at first rate premiums. I've been considering rolling my own around a Raspberry Pi, but I'm not sure how dependable they are. Does anyone have any advice on that front?

marak830 10y ago
I second this. I'm looking at writing my own for the restaurant, as frankly their prices are insane for the horrid quality.
rtpg 10y ago
I imagine that stuffing an RPi into a box in a badly ventilated area might cause some heating issues. They run hot and are not really rated to handle that long-term. More generally, if you're looking at POS systems, the new hotness is to just use a tablet. Solves the display problem quite easily. USB barcorde scanners usually work as keyboards, so it's not hard to get set up. If you're looking to do it with a Pi, there are small screens for the device, but I think the parts total will quickly get higher than a low-end Android tablet.
- tomelders 10y ago
  Tablet's get expensive pretty quickly, and they will break. I need at least five EPOSs for "reasons". And I reckon I could have every thing I need, plus replacement hardware on location for a fraction of the cost of using tablets.
  - AlphaSite 10y ago
    A tablet runs for $200, it's not even close to the expense of a normal POS, is it?
    - nacs 10y ago
      > A tablet runs for $200 You can get an Amazon Fire tablet for around $50. Offbrand Chinese ones are even cheaper.
  - rtpg 10y ago
    I don't mean to sound dismissive (building your own stuff is a good exercise in minimalism) but whatever you're building has a decent likelihood to break as well. Think about having a custom linux setup compared to Windows. There's some extra stability in one angle, but your wifi stops working every full moon and your keyboard layout gets randomized on reboot. Though the advantage of building it yourself is that you can replace more specific parts.
joe5150 10y ago
the Pis themselves tend to be reliable; the weak point will probably be the microSD card for one hosting write-heavy apps
- hasperdi 10y ago
  +1 for this. There is more explanation here: http://hackaday.com/2016/08/03/single-board-revolution-preventing-flash-memory-corruption/ http://hackaday.com/2016/08/03/single-board-revolution-preve...
- trome 10y ago
  Yeah, data corruption is a big issue with the Pis, and definitely not something you want on a Point of Sale.
- jacobush 10y ago
  True. If I need a lof of writes, I hook up an SSD. Also, For some applications, you can roll your own root file system and mostly avoid writes. I.e. Yocto
- tomelders 10y ago
  In my head it would be booting into Chromium to run an offline web app, and the app would make requests against a CouchDB service on the local network. No transaction data would be written to the Pi's memory. This is all just spitballing though. I'm literally just considering it.
donquichotte 10y ago
I don't know about the Raspberry Pi Zero, but I've been running a reliability test-bench for power semiconductors non-stop since August '16, and the Raspberry Pi 3 hasn't failed me once. I did purchase an industrial USB Hub though because there were too many USB peripherals drawing too much current.
camperman 10y ago
Very. I have 200+ digital signs running on customer sites 24x7 playing videos, images, live feeds and showing web pages without trouble for over three years now.
- DerWOK 10y ago
  Sounds pretty cool! Some source/how-to you can share?
  - camperman 10y ago
    It's pretty boring to be honest, which is probably why it's so reliable. I sync media using rsync, the movie and stream player is omxplayer, the image and news feeds use Lua and Love2D, and the scheduler is a simple algorithm which was written first in LuaJIT, then Python and soon in Go because of speed and concurrency. The players push their status to a central server for monitoring purposes but I'm replacing that with pull and Ansible. The customer interface is web2py and the schedule creator is desktop wxpython running on Linux, the Mac and Windows.
    - leonhandreke 10y ago
      That sounds like a cool side project/business! Would you mind elaborating how you got started this business and how you acquired clients?
      - camperman 10y ago
        An old friend approached me with the idea and we have developed it together. He used to work for a media company which had these sort of clients already so we got a head start when they folded and we stepped in to pick up the slack. Subsequent sales have all been word-of-mouth. Product development has been entirely driven by customers: they need something, I put it in and then every player gets the new functionality once it's battle-tested. When we first looked at the market, we realized that no-one really knew how it worked because it's still very young. So we decided to compete on price and reliability. Instead of lock-in contracts and up-front hardware purchases, we charge a small month-to-month rental and the hardware remains ours.
trome 10y ago
What industry are you looking to use this POS in? Do you want something reliable? What options have you looked at? The bare minimum your gonna need is an Epson TM-T88V, a wired Metrologic, NCR or Datalogic Scanner (spend more than $50 for something decent), and a cash drawer. Other things you will probably want are a programmable keyboard, NCR 78 or Datalogic 9800i, coin dispenser & an integrated pinpad for processing credit/debit.
- tomelders 10y ago
  Sort of retail. Yeah, I'm looking at having a printer controlled cash draw. I don't need a bar code scanner. A Raspberry Pi touch display. And some sort of pinpad hardware and payment processing service I can integrate with. I think that's "all" I need for what I have in mind.
  - trome 10y ago
    > Sort of retail. Eh, that is really vague, if you could be more specific I could help ya more. > I'm looking at having a printer controlled cash draw. No reason not to use the printer to control the cash drawer, every receipt printer you look at will support 1 if not 2 cash drawers. > I don't need a bar code scanner. Do you only have a few items which you intend to have on a touchscreen? >A Raspberry Pi touch display. How big/how high resolution? > And some sort of pinpad Look at the Pax Px7 or Dejavoo, we wrote PHP bindings for Pax's API. Would recommend you avoid Datacap, most semi-integrated credit/debit offerings are a pretty penny besides the two I mentioned. https://github.com/AccelerateNetworks/PHPax https://github.com/AccelerateNetworks/PHPax
kbart 10y ago
PCI[0] compliance might be a problem if you want to accept payment cards. Also, getting banks to recognize you as a payment processor is PITA (disclaimer: I work in POS development). 0. https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/ https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/
- tomelders 10y ago
  I'm searching around for something I can integrate with. I'm not going to create my own payments solution.
  - kbart 10y ago
    If by that you mean to simply add display on top of a cash register and pinpad, then yes, RPi will do just fine. However, if you want to manage payments as well, you must conform to PCI standard and get certified which is lengthy and costly process.
gadgetoid 10y ago
We have two set up permanently in our shop post room, with barcode scanners attached. Every order is scanned through a Pi. They've been running non-stop for over a year now, and are hard powered off and on again at the mains every single week day. I'd say they're pretty dependable.

marak830 10y ago

I second this. I'm looking at writing my own for the restaurant, as frankly their prices are insane for the horrid quality.

rtpg 10y ago

I imagine that stuffing an RPi into a box in a badly ventilated area might cause some heating issues. They run hot and are not really rated to handle that long-term. More generally, if you're looking at POS systems, the new hotness is to just use a tablet. Solves the display problem quite easily. USB barcorde scanners usually work as keyboards, so it's not hard to get set up. If you're looking to do it with a Pi, there are small screens for the device, but I think the parts total will quickly get higher than a low-end Android tablet.

tomelders 10y ago
Tablet's get expensive pretty quickly, and they will break. I need at least five EPOSs for "reasons". And I reckon I could have every thing I need, plus replacement hardware on location for a fraction of the cost of using tablets.
- AlphaSite 10y ago
  A tablet runs for $200, it's not even close to the expense of a normal POS, is it?
  - nacs 10y ago
    > A tablet runs for $200 You can get an Amazon Fire tablet for around $50. Offbrand Chinese ones are even cheaper.
- rtpg 10y ago
  I don't mean to sound dismissive (building your own stuff is a good exercise in minimalism) but whatever you're building has a decent likelihood to break as well. Think about having a custom linux setup compared to Windows. There's some extra stability in one angle, but your wifi stops working every full moon and your keyboard layout gets randomized on reboot. Though the advantage of building it yourself is that you can replace more specific parts.

joe5150 10y ago

the Pis themselves tend to be reliable; the weak point will probably be the microSD card for one hosting write-heavy apps

hasperdi 10y ago
+1 for this. There is more explanation here: http://hackaday.com/2016/08/03/single-board-revolution-preventing-flash-memory-corruption/ http://hackaday.com/2016/08/03/single-board-revolution-preve...
trome 10y ago
Yeah, data corruption is a big issue with the Pis, and definitely not something you want on a Point of Sale.
jacobush 10y ago
True. If I need a lof of writes, I hook up an SSD. Also, For some applications, you can roll your own root file system and mostly avoid writes. I.e. Yocto
tomelders 10y ago
In my head it would be booting into Chromium to run an offline web app, and the app would make requests against a CouchDB service on the local network. No transaction data would be written to the Pi's memory. This is all just spitballing though. I'm literally just considering it.

donquichotte 10y ago

I don't know about the Raspberry Pi Zero, but I've been running a reliability test-bench for power semiconductors non-stop since August '16, and the Raspberry Pi 3 hasn't failed me once. I did purchase an industrial USB Hub though because there were too many USB peripherals drawing too much current.

camperman 10y ago

Very. I have 200+ digital signs running on customer sites 24x7 playing videos, images, live feeds and showing web pages without trouble for over three years now.

DerWOK 10y ago
Sounds pretty cool! Some source/how-to you can share?
- camperman 10y ago
  It's pretty boring to be honest, which is probably why it's so reliable. I sync media using rsync, the movie and stream player is omxplayer, the image and news feeds use Lua and Love2D, and the scheduler is a simple algorithm which was written first in LuaJIT, then Python and soon in Go because of speed and concurrency. The players push their status to a central server for monitoring purposes but I'm replacing that with pull and Ansible. The customer interface is web2py and the schedule creator is desktop wxpython running on Linux, the Mac and Windows.
  - leonhandreke 10y ago
    That sounds like a cool side project/business! Would you mind elaborating how you got started this business and how you acquired clients?
    - camperman 10y ago
      An old friend approached me with the idea and we have developed it together. He used to work for a media company which had these sort of clients already so we got a head start when they folded and we stepped in to pick up the slack. Subsequent sales have all been word-of-mouth. Product development has been entirely driven by customers: they need something, I put it in and then every player gets the new functionality once it's battle-tested. When we first looked at the market, we realized that no-one really knew how it worked because it's still very young. So we decided to compete on price and reliability. Instead of lock-in contracts and up-front hardware purchases, we charge a small month-to-month rental and the hardware remains ours.

trome 10y ago

What industry are you looking to use this POS in? Do you want something reliable? What options have you looked at? The bare minimum your gonna need is an Epson TM-T88V, a wired Metrologic, NCR or Datalogic Scanner (spend more than $50 for something decent), and a cash drawer. Other things you will probably want are a programmable keyboard, NCR 78 or Datalogic 9800i, coin dispenser & an integrated pinpad for processing credit/debit.

tomelders 10y ago
Sort of retail. Yeah, I'm looking at having a printer controlled cash draw. I don't need a bar code scanner. A Raspberry Pi touch display. And some sort of pinpad hardware and payment processing service I can integrate with. I think that's "all" I need for what I have in mind.
- trome 10y ago
  > Sort of retail. Eh, that is really vague, if you could be more specific I could help ya more. > I'm looking at having a printer controlled cash draw. No reason not to use the printer to control the cash drawer, every receipt printer you look at will support 1 if not 2 cash drawers. > I don't need a bar code scanner. Do you only have a few items which you intend to have on a touchscreen? >A Raspberry Pi touch display. How big/how high resolution? > And some sort of pinpad Look at the Pax Px7 or Dejavoo, we wrote PHP bindings for Pax's API. Would recommend you avoid Datacap, most semi-integrated credit/debit offerings are a pretty penny besides the two I mentioned. https://github.com/AccelerateNetworks/PHPax https://github.com/AccelerateNetworks/PHPax

kbart 10y ago

PCI[0] compliance might be a problem if you want to accept payment cards. Also, getting banks to recognize you as a payment processor is PITA (disclaimer: I work in POS development). 0. https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/ https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/

tomelders 10y ago
I'm searching around for something I can integrate with. I'm not going to create my own payments solution.
- kbart 10y ago
  If by that you mean to simply add display on top of a cash register and pinpad, then yes, RPi will do just fine. However, if you want to manage payments as well, you must conform to PCI standard and get certified which is lengthy and costly process.

gadgetoid 10y ago

We have two set up permanently in our shop post room, with barcode scanners attached. Every order is scanned through a Pi. They've been running non-stop for over a year now, and are hard powered off and on again at the mains every single week day. I'd say they're pretty dependable.