Complete POS System

[FMDuck]

Hi folks,

I'm looking to design a complete POS solution in FM7. Currently the plan is to design it for Windows, but OS X isn't out of the questions.

The solution will include pretty much everything:

- 15" or 17" (ELO) Touchscreen

- Customer Poll Display

- 2 Track Card Reader and;

- Handheld Barcode Scanner

- Cash Drawer

- (Epson) Thermal Printer WITH cutter (or an easier to program brand?)

- 8 Port (or so) Serial Expansion Card

- Possibly a liquid cooled CPU because of limited air flow

Can any one provide any advice on brands or issues pertaining to speed and integration? The solution will only have about 15 users but half of them will be at a second location and access the solution over a T1.

I assume the Trio Serial plug-in is the best/only option for managing the various devices but I'm especially concerned about the number of serial devices.

A stable all-in-one POS machine would be good if anyone has tested one and is confident that it's stable.

Any help would be... well... helpful!

Thanks.

[RalphL]

I think the only thing that will require a serial port is the cash drawer and the Troi Serial Plug-in is must.

Most of the other devices use USB.

You didn't say anything about a server.

[FMDuck]

They aleady have a OS X server, so it will probably run on that. What's the relevence you see here? Server-side plug-ins?

Thanks for the fast post.

[RalphL]

I was just wondering how complete you were going to specify this system.

The last POS I did was in FMP 5.5 & 6 with FMS. It was in a Windows OS and the hardware had been purchased for another system.

[Conartist]

I am working on creating a similar system for my small busines. I am looking for a POS plug in. What will you be using to authorize the credit cards? I can't seem to find a good one that supports FM 7. I've looked at CCAuthorize, however they've not returned any phone calls or emails. That doesn't give me a good feeling about their support. However it does seem to be what I'm looking for. Any other suggestions?

Edited August 26, 2005 by Guest

[SteveB]

I would stay away from anything Waves in Motion markets (no service), especially CC Authorize...I fought with the boss for many months trying to make it work. They eventually gave me my money back. I wound up doing my own in WinBatch that works with Verisign. Verisign has an SDK that is really easy to use; basically a commandline interface which I passed arguments to and captured the codes coming back by piping the DOS output to a file. You might be able to do the whole thing with just Troi File.

Steve

[stanley]

Conartist:

I just got an email from FMWebSchool with the following in it:

We look forward to seeing many of you at Devcon! We will be demonstrating FXCart, FXForge and CAFEphp at our booth. We will also be using FileMaker and our new secure plug-in IPOST to process orders. IPOST allows us to use a credit card reader, swipe the card, and process the card in seconds all with FileMaker Pro.

I don't know if the IPOST plugin has been released yet, but you can contact them at:

http://www.fmwebschool.com/index.htm

-Stanley

[FMWebschool]

Hi, yes the plug-in is ready and we will be launching it next week. We used IPOST for all of our credit card transactions at the show, and actually sold quite a few of them. Average time from the time the card was swiped till the transaction information hit our FileMaker database was anywhere from 3-5 seconds. Email us or give us a call at 800.353.7950 or [email protected] if you have questions.

[Conartist]

I've experienced really poor tech suppport with FMWebschool's printer plugin so I would be hesitant to buy anything else from them. I was considering CC authorize but they were very slow to respond to emails and phone messages as well. I therefore don't feel confortable with either one of these options but eventually I will have to just use one of them. I will continue to lurk around and see what others come up with for solutions.

[FMWebschool]

FMWebschool, had a joint partnership with Mele Inc. for development and support of plug-ins developed for FMPlugins. We have closed FMPlugin for that very reason, the developer that we hired for development and training was not following up on tech support calls and emails. Once we found that this was becoming a problem, we contacted Tom Jenkins of PracticeMaker.com to develop and support our new plug-ins. Thomas Jenkins has been developing FileMaker Plug-ins for years and is a highly respected developer in the Plug-in community. FMWebschool is in the process of developing several plug-ins with Mr. Jenkins. We are also offering special upgrades and pricing to anyone that previously purchased a plug-in from FMPlugin.com

We value our customers and provide phone, email, and live support on our website mon-saturday from 8:30 till 7:00 p.m. at www.fmwebschool.com and www.fxforge.net I don't think that you will find many companies that do this. We had the unfortunate partnership with Mele Inc. which failed to meet our standards for support. FMplugin.com was removed for that reason.

I hope this clears things up a little.