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Ihateplastic
Trad climber
Lake Oswego, Oregon
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Topic Author's Original Post - Jun 10, 2009 - 04:25am PT
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So... lets say someone bought a ticket to a concert or movie online and rather than getting the ticket physically mailed to them they get a .PDF in their inbox which they print at home. It has a scannable bar code which is checked at the show entrance.
Anyone know software/program for this type of solution?
I am already generating e-mailed receipts with transaction numbers so it should be pretty easy to generate a barcode from that number and, in turn, generate a .PDF for auto-e-mail.
Ideas?
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nutjob
climber
Berkeley, CA
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Jun 10, 2009 - 10:26am PT
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I suspect he's talking about ticket stubs for climbing roadshows, and it will make the lines move faster if the dude/dudette at the gate can just scan each piece of paper and listen for a beep rather than reading each piece of paper given to them.
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Studly
Trad climber
WA
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Jun 10, 2009 - 11:34am PT
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Contact Big Hairy Dog.
Seriously.
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TradIsGood
Chalkless climber
the Gunks end of the country
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Jun 10, 2009 - 12:20pm PT
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Maybe you could just print name, address, and "seat number" on each ticket.
Then you can sell the unsold seats at the door. Unsold seat tickets are identified in a way unknown to the buyers, and handed to the purchaser on entry. When someone tries to get in on a bogus ticket, it generates a collision on seating (except for no-shows, but you got paid for them anyway).
If the seating is not numbered at the venue, just number them before opening by putting on numbered pieces of painter's masking tape.
Collisions are resolved by determining who bought the seat, and looking at a form of id if necessary. (Maybe just a password generated by the user, which is also on the master list.)
All of that could easily be stored in a spread-sheet. No hardware purchase, barcode generators, etc. necessary.
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Ihateplastic
Trad climber
Lake Oswego, Oregon
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 10, 2009 - 02:24pm PT
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Thanks to the above suggestsions... I will look into them and continue to search!
Here's the deal... As I begin to put together my back-end procedures there are some that seem WAY too slow. At this point here is the process:
1. I design and print numbered tickets that are perfed and cut. Money and time.
2. Order is placed online and I am notified.
Envelope is addressed, postage stamp put on, tickets are inserted and letter goes to post office. Money and time.
All of this also increases the risk of screwups (badly written address, not enough postage, lost in the mail, wrong ticket in the envelope, etc.)
So why not generate an automatic .PDF and have the customer print at home? To avoid any fraud the tickets are bar-coded which allows them to be quickly scanned (two seconds.) This means customers get tickets the instant they order them, no postage expence, no perfing, printing, cutting, mailing, enveloping, etc.
I know I can easily get a reader for the door, the question is how to generate them on the fly and have the ticket appear in the inbox of the customer. Ticketmaster does it, airlines do it, theatres do it. I know we are a wee bit smaller than them, but there must be some open-source stuff out there...
Over the next year of doing Stonemaster, Bachar, local and a few other shows (in the works) the printing, stamping, mailing, etc. will take a TON of time and added expense. If I am trying to keep these shows at $12 I want to find all mechanisms/procedures to streamline costs and efforts.
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Ihateplastic
Trad climber
Lake Oswego, Oregon
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 10, 2009 - 02:35pm PT
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To answer the question of validation v. fraud...
As much as we all know climbers are 100% fair, honest and loyal it stands to reason that any surfers coming to the show might print hundreds of tickets and hand out to friends.
So, I guess the tickets need to be scanned and marked as used. I know that increases the complexity of the system but I need to address the issue as remote as it might be.
The key problems:
-Efficiency of current manual system.
-Fraud prevention
-Get people through the door as quickly as possible.
It doesn't need to be a perfect system at this point just better than all the manual work that is going on.
Open to suggestions!
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Ihateplastic
Trad climber
Lake Oswego, Oregon
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 10, 2009 - 02:40pm PT
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PAid list works, of course... but if we have a good PRE-PAID show with lots of pre-paid tickets (think Los Angeles or Bay Area where there could be 750+ people) I don't think people want to wait in line to get their name crossed off.
It might be the next best system from a cost perspective but I think people might get pissed waiting. Maybe not... Hell, I don't know!
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nutjob
climber
Berkeley, CA
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Jun 10, 2009 - 02:52pm PT
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I would build a centralized LAMP platform (PHP/Perl MySQL) and just take a laptop with a wireless/mobile card to each show location. You can also replicate the DB to the latop and run off a local copy for each show as a backup in case the Internet access is down. But it is preferable to work in real-time to do the verification in case there are changes while people are waiting in line. Fallback is verification against a local DB copy that is a snapshot from a few hours before the show.
Edit: Here are some code pointers for image generation (just generate the image with the unique serial number of the ticket as an input parameter, name the image the same as the unique serial number, and reference this image on the rendered HTML page. Customer prints out the webpage, there's the ticket. Any cheap barcode scanner can read it and it's entered to a standard PC just like input text on a keyboard. You might have to do a little tweaking to just have a scan of the barcode trigger the webpage query to the DB, without needing to hit return on the keyboard (automatically entering return after the scan is probably an option you can set on the barcode reader by using a special barcode configuration page that ships with the barcoder-- it's just a page full of special barcodes that re-program the behavior of the barcoder).
As for generating the barcode image...
PERL version:
http://search.cpan.org/~avinash/GD-Barcode-Image-1.03/lib/GD/Barcode/Image.pm
PHP version:
not well maintained: http://pear.php.net/package/Image_Barcode
Java version:
http://www.roncemer.com/software-development/java-bar-code
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froodish
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jun 10, 2009 - 02:58pm PT
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Outta be possible to do away with the scanner and just use the webcam built into notebooks these days, non? See Delicious Library for a great example of this:
http://www.delicious-monster.com/
Or would the quality of printing from an inkjet preclude that?
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nutjob
climber
Berkeley, CA
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Jun 10, 2009 - 03:04pm PT
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IMHO, the form factor and durability of a barcode scanner would make it a preferable solution to using a webcam and image processing software. And good barcoder guns are only ~ $100 or not more than $200 for one that you can drop on concrete from 6 feet in the air and it still works.
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stevep
Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
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Jun 10, 2009 - 03:11pm PT
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Look on ebay. There's got to be plenty of places going out of business these days that are looking to unload scanners.
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Ihateplastic
Trad climber
Lake Oswego, Oregon
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 10, 2009 - 03:20pm PT
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The hardware (scanner) part is easy... but I do see a problem with climbers who have printed it with a Brother ink jet (running low on ink)then crammed their barcoded ticket into a haul bag and dragged it up the SFWC and then show up at the event with something I can't read.
Starting to lean to an alphabetized list... old school but it works.
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Ihateplastic
Trad climber
Lake Oswego, Oregon
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 10, 2009 - 04:12pm PT
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Yep, the willcall idea is looking better all the time. My daugyter did a pretty large fashion show recently and ALL the tickets were will call or buy-at-the-door. Worked for them, so why not us?
After all... climbers are used to waiting at the base of Lurking Fear, SFHD, Nose, the Diamond, Everest, etc. Can't they wait for a few minutes while a name is checked?
Okay, thanks all! Now I will try to put together the killer spreadsheet/lookup system so screwups are limited to less than 1%
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couchmaster
climber
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Jun 10, 2009 - 04:35pm PT
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I would go with whatever Joseph (HealyJE) comes up with.
_
Fatty, you better not announce yer presence at the door as you might not get in. (just kidding dude!!!!LOL!)
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| Messages 1 - 16 of total 16 in this topic |
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SuperTopo on the Web
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The scanner does not arrive at the venue.
Let us know!