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Need some help with a QMS for a non-profit


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The problem:

A friend of mine who is involved in a non-profit medical assistance organization asked me if I could have a look at the QMS (Queue Management System) and Digital Signage system the organization bought (for an awful amount of money BTW) and that was never installed/tested/configured/whatever by the supplier because the company went bankrupt (and anyway they were not capable of configuring the setup).

The system is (was) intended to be installed in a medical ambulatory.

 

The current situation:

I have available the actual hardware consisting of:

1) three small "brick" PC's, all of them running Windows 7 (but of course this can be changed), one intended to be a "server" and two intended to be "clients", bolted behind the TV's

2) two 32" LCD FLAT TV's

3) a "ticketing" kiosk, which upon visual inspection appears to be nothing more complex than a tablet (has to be checked but likely running a windows embedded or CE of some kind) and a thermal ticket printer integrated in a three foot tall metal stand/pillar.

4) A proprietary software (currently locked by a password) that has all the looks of being a (crappy) Access based *something*

 

The expected goal:

1) have the displays show 4 or 5 (anyway no more than ten) queue lines numbers (something loosely similar to the "We are now serving ...", one for each medical room and *something* else, let's say at the bottom the name and telephone number of the charity and a window with - say - a TV feed from the news channel. 

2) have the counters of the queue line number be incremented or decremented by any (authorized) PC in the intranet (loosely one in each doctor's room + one at the reception

3) Have *somehow* the ticketing "kiosk" print tickets in sequence incrementing the printed number, divided for each queue

This MUST be free and as simple as possible, though foolproof is always a big word, particularly when fools are involved in the daily use of something, the expectation is for somethign that doesn't break easily or that is very easy to fix if broken.

 

I managed to contact the actual maker of the kiosk and I am expecting in a few days to be able to understand what is in it and what it does currently, but anyway I don't think that it will be much of an issue to simply replace the current "unknown" tablet with *any* suitable el-cheapo one.

 

I had a look around and it seem like there is nothing free/open-source that can do something like that in the simplest possible way, what I mentally imagined was:

  1. a (local) http server running on the "server" PC with
  2. a number of pages, each with an access or similar counter (which would be *somehow* incremented when a ticket is requested from the kiosk)
  3. a page to be served to a browser on the two bolted-on-TV PC's displaying the updated status of the various counters, the static text and the TV feed 
  4. a number of password protected pages, one for each counter/room displaying just the current status of the single counter and a +/- button to increment or decrement the publicly displayed browser
  5. an "admin" page, also password protected with all the counters and a +/- and reset button for each (let's call it "receptionist page"

I expected to find tens, maybe hundreds of similar examples, I was prepared to wade through a myriad of half-@§§edly implemented setups in order to borrow (or steal) some simple javascript code and "site template" but I came out empty handed :w00t::ph34r:

 

Besides the usual "Let me teach you javascript programming, here you will learn how to display "Hello World" to a web page" extremely lengthy description of a three line snippet followed by the sentence "OK, now that you have learned the basics to complete this project you just need add the buttons, the authentication of the page, interface to SQLite through a Perl script running a Java VM  executing a VAX emulator initiating an instance of ....:(, I found only one simple (here simple means that I can understand) example here:

http://www.osyes.net/

which BTW seems coincidentally originated from Italy, but that seems to me not simple (in the sense of simple) at all :ph34r: as it needs:

 

Linux/Unix
Apache 1.3 +
PHP 5.3.2 +
MySQL 4.1 +

 

and however, besides the total lack of documentation gives the impression of being as half-@§§ed as something I could probably write myself :ph34r:.

 

All the rest I could find are extremely complex "framworks", "Ultimate Digital Signage" tools and *what not*, a number of which stupidly "cloud based", some purely Commercial "masked" as Open Source, with only a few exceptions:

Vodigy (seemingly now defunct as a company) for which I have anyway as well no good feeling

and xibo:

http://xibo.org.uk/

which appears like nice but simply too complex and with a whole lot of complications both on the server and on the client side (I am not disputing that PHP/mySQL/JSON/SOAP and .net/Flash/IE/WMP etc. are not needed for the wide possibilities xibo offers, but they seem to me overkill and a possible cause of issues/problems for the very simple needs I have).

Same goes - at first sight - for Dashing:

http://shopify.github.io/dashing/

 

The request:

If you happen to know a FREE, SIMPLE, NOT involved with the CLOUD, tool or site template or *whatever* that could be useful to reach the goal  I would appreciate your help/suggestions/ideas.

 

As well if you have the time (and knowledge) to put together something that could do or help me in putting it together it would be highly appreciated, remember that the "end user" is a charity/non-profit organization :).

 

jaclaz

 

 

 

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 I just didn't want you to think no one saw your post.  :)

 

Thank you :), but that's one good thing of the board software, this thread has now 100 (one hundred) views, evidently once detracted a few ones possibly caused by me or by some bots, all by people that share your lack of familiarity with the topic at hand since there was (yet) no useful reply.

 

I guess that we can define it moderately popular but possibly too "narrow" or too "specific" :( even for a dedicated section like:

 

Web Development (HTML, Java, PHP, ASP, XML, etc.)

Code snippets, tutorials, and help

 

 

Of course there are possible alternative explanations :unsure: , we'll see if anyone comes out with some ideas/suggestions.

 

jaclaz

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have absolutely *no clue* if this would be of use to you, but...

 

Dayton (OH) Veteran's Administration Medical Center has something quite close to what you want in-place and most likely every VA Medical Center in the U.S. has something similar. Perhaps finding a way of contacting someone that could put you in contact with someone who...

http://www.dayton.va.gov/

A Long Shot, I know, but maybe?

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  • 10 months later...

Hi jaclaz , i have the same problem : -) acttualy i'm doing a personal project for a school with digital signage ( Xibo ) and a Queue management system (non proffit too) . Well you have a basic but nice tool called novosga , is a brasil project http://rogeriolino.com/2013/02/05/novo-sga/ for the public administration ,  really all work in Linux and Windows (services , priorities etc... )  firstly was programmed in Java and he ( Rogerio Lino ) moved to a website project ( is transalte in Spanish/ Portugues/ English ) .

I'm trying to do a integration but i'm stolled to do how disable frames and how create a "call" from novosga to the xibo .

https://answers.launchpad.net/xibo/+question/191080

If you finished your project how you did it?

Thanks in advantge ( and sorry for my english )

--

Francesc

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  • 2 weeks later...
On giovedì 5 maggio 2016 at 11:36 AM, Francesc said:

If you finished your project how you did it?

Thanks in advantge ( and sorry for my english )

--

Francesc

The project was "put on hold" (actually put "among the things I might finish when I have time and will", which translates to "never"). :(

I do have a "somewhat working" setup, but I doubt that it might be of use for you exactly because it AVOIDS the use of xibo or any of the other senselessly (for the simple task at hand) complex "frameworks" (or whatever you call them).

If I recall correctly, it was a simple set of PHP scripts, if you are anyay interested in them, let me know, I might be able to find them in some backup and share them.

jaclaz
 

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