Start your shift as a server.
Take the damn upvote, and get outta here.
What a horrible design to require an individual computer for EVERY screen. JFC just have one device run multiple displays.
Why not just do a sticker there? What an inefficient approach!
Sticker requires transport, inefficient as shit relative to a file download.
As if the sugar water inside teleports there through a mere downloading deployment via Ansible.
Ansyruple
It’s probably literally cheaper to have a cheap device that supports one display than a single device capable of supporting multiple displays.
It also simplifies the design. You don’t need different hardware requirements or software configs for a slushy system of 3 or 4 or 5 flavors. You just have a single design for each slushy device.
On top of that, when a device is restarting or failed it only has a single failure. All of the other flavors are displayed.
Also, for the other “why not a sticker” comments. Having a digital display does have its advantages. You may not want your chain of stores having tacky hand drawn labels by a lazy employee. This prevents that. You can include the price in the display later if you want to. Ensuring you charge more for that “limited time” flavor and you don’t have to send stickers to each store.
Also, the cost of these displays is so little in comparison to the mechanical parts that operate the actual machine it’s likely worth the it for the flexibility in display.
Also, digital displays catch the eyes more. You’re gonna get more people that notice a flashy machine and think “I’m in the mood for a slurpy”. That alone is likely worth any other cost.
Capitalism doesn’t have to “make sense” in terms of design or simplicity. It often doesn’t. It chooses the things that return the most profit. It’s not reason based in “logic” it’s reason based in “profit”.
It also has the benefit of being able to show metrics and diagnostics right there without having to connect it to another device.
Also, for the other “why not a sticker” comments. Having a digital display does have its advantages. You may not want your chain of stores having tacky hand drawn labels by a lazy employee. This prevents that. You can include the price in the display later if you want to. Ensuring you charge more for that “limited time” flavor and you don’t have to send stickers to each store.
Ear me out: you print them, crazy right?!
You don’t have to send stickers to each store.
So purchase a nice color printer for each store? Or have an employee go to print at staples when you want to change labels?
Like, “just print them” is a lot more effort than you are making it sound to avoid the use of an extremely cheap screen.
There is a reason all vehicles put a big ass display in their car now even though people prefer actual buttons. Screens and software are dirt cheap. A printer with moving mechanical parts is expensive. Using employee time is expensive. Shipping is expensive.
You can pay other companies to print for you duh, they will print you anything for dirt cheap, it’s not like a company can’t afford it lmao
Yes, if the infrastructure is in place for it it can be very cheap. But obviously, the people working at these companies decided that the benefits of the digital screens are worth the small upfront cost of the machine.
Why can’t people understand that printing a physical copy of something off-site requires transport and overhead cost that are entirely eliminated by just literally using a digital screen that has a longer shelf life than the mechanical parts of the machine itself. It’s not that complicated to understand.
This gives you the advantage of literally being able to change the ad instantly. Based on time of year, event, etc. Its an ad. It’s good to be digital. It’s an ad. It’s not a label.
Why do you send an email instead of sending a letter? A smartphone is so expensive! /s
There are benefits beyond just cost. This isn’t about cost. THIS IS ABOUT PROFITS.
A raspy W is like 20 bucks each, and has a tiny footprint. Cheaper than the screen itself probably, and simpler than having to reconfigure the amount of displays based on available flavors in the setup.
Plus, I hear the systemd flavor is pretty good.
God I remember buying an RPi for less than 10€ this company really screwed up their product.
The only Raspberry Pi cheaper than 10€ is the Raspberry Pi Zero (no wifi) that launch at 5€/$5, the Raspberry Pi Zero W (with wifi) launch at 10€/$10, both in 2015. Raspberry Pi 1, 2 and 3 launched at 35€ and since the 4 and 5, it’s a bit more complicated because they have different RAM options. Today, the RPi4 1GB is sold 37,90€. Availability is more of an issue. But in terms of pricing it’s not bad ! I have the feeling, people’s expectations for a Raspberry Pi are a bit distorted. No, you don’t get a top of the line gaming PC for 40€… But even a RPi2 is still good for a tone of useful projects!
Might be a single computer that’s just the primary display.
Nothing in that boot sequence is a deal breaker it’s just missing an Internet connection I think.
Nah, storage is fried.
People always focus on systemd whenever this is posted, but all systemd is saying is that it can’t read the service files when it tries to start something. Earlier on the kernel is complaining about I/O errors as well.
Oh yeah youre right, I was squinting real hard to try and read that on on a phone and was only looking at the bottom
And then they blame ai for the ram shortage
If every single dispenser is a self contained unit, which then is put together in groups of how many different kinds of drink you need? That seems cheaper than having each group of dispensers individually built because all displays have to be wired up to a single computer. This way a single dispenser can be replaced quickly without needing a technician to come or replacing the whole thing.
They make display boards with modular numbers of outputs.
Coca cola runs windows
I imagine they have an embedded raspberry pi type computer in the screen itself.
This is weird to see so many things needing to be a screen…
I drink Arch btw
installing Arch on myself
SystemDrink
Mord important question: Why do they all have their own system?
Cost, Parts availability
They’re building them out of cheap SBC with sd cards.
It’s cheaper to put four economy SBC’s in than one computer that can handle 4 displays.
what is my purpose?You show a Mt Dew ad at a single store in Ketchikan, AK
Oh GOD, can’t I pass some butter?
or, hear me out, a backlit piece of paper
They did that for years. It’s a good servicable option.
Of course, printing all those out and shipping them all over the world isn’t without cost.
These can be animated. Ideally, they can have an attract mode to improve sales.
Corporate can force the hand of small shops to put the flavors in they want to market.
There are probably as many pros as there are cons.
You’re 100% correct, they’re not necessary
sorry to easy we’d rather go with a company that specializes in this task and charges a monthly subscription
As is the way of marketing.
I’m pretty sure its shopped because I’ve never seen a machine with actual displays in it for each flavor lol. They all use paper cut outs.
Maybe only the one on the right is a screen so you can diagnose things, but the rest are paper?
because computing is a forgotten magic and no one knows how to correctly operate those black boxes
Verify your age to drink the SystemD drink
SystemDrink
SystemD drink is for me and you!
The complexity of modern stuff boggles my mind. Why?
I guess it could make sense to have a small computer in a Slurpee machine to check the temperature and the consistency of the ice, maybe do some maintenance, but yeah. Paper tags would make a lot more sense.
I can see having a single node in the whole machine, but one per mix makes me think this photo is doctored. Then again an esp32 is pretty damn cheap.
Very odd, I’d have thought it’s a single system too, surely there’s a lot of shared signals, like temperature, cleaning and whatnot.
The only reason for those to be individual with another ‘parent’ system is that it would be fully modular?I’d be interested in the actual answer/reason…
Just read through the installation and operations manual, and it looks like you’re right on the modular part. They offer 2, 3, and 4 dispenser models, along with a 1 and 2 dispenser “Multi-Flavor”. From what I can tell they have some other modules in the machine that control different things, as well as a parent module to tie them all together. The machine also tracks how often each dispenser is used, so the owner can know which flavors are popular and overall how profitable the machine is.
The machine has to manage electricity to solenoids, motors, sensors of all sorts, etc, as well as CO2, N2, compressed air, refrigerant, water, and syrup. A lot more complex than I ever thought while getting a slushy.
Be able to change the picture remotely. New flavor? No need to print out a new sticker, remove the old one, and add the new one.
Why not use a sticker and a backlight instead of a whole ass pc?
Adverts, sooner or later
The entire screen is already an advert.
Ah but they don’t get paid extra to show it, by having a screen they can get paid by other companies to advertise for them
Adverts, sooner
or laterEvery public-facing surface will be ripe for adverts. Previews of it at gas stations in the US, and nearly everywhere in countries like Philippines.
You’re right - but at least for now they’re advertising Linux 😀
wait till you see electronic price tags. adverts and price gouging per person
Not only that, but is each flavor a different system??? Wtf
That’s the actual wild part; using a simple (~$5) SOC to support a dynamic, remotely manageable, UI for an industrial appliance as in this case is reasonable. But dedicated a system per dispenser head is wild.
I guess it could possibly be deemed to be worth it for an ‘industrial’ application like this as it could reduce per-head downtime if just one fails. But man, that’s a lot of silicon for such a task.
I guess this is an instance where ‘mission critical’ actually means something!
The real reason for modern complexity is to create more bullshit jobs and ensure money keeps flowing.
If we just said “enough”, which is true, we’d have a leisure society and people would have time to start thinking.
We can’t have that, so instead we have Linux soft drink dispensers that need multi-core CPUs, containers, VMs, gigabytes of RAM, SSDs, always-on internet connection, and endless hardware upgrades to dispense carbonated water and sugar syrup.
Something a mechanical switch from 1855 can do.
Whenever you change the product or the visual of it is changes, you change the sticker, this is automatic.
If I were to make these devices I would make it so that changing the BiB to different flavor would automatically change the screen.
If you’re changing out the product with something different, then swapping out an insert really isn’t a big task.
Design, get design approved, print inserts, package inserts, ship inserts, give lead time for most stores to receive inserts, swap inserts, discard old inserts.
As opposed to design, get design approved, send.
And the product just what, magically shows up? If you’re swapping out the flavor, that’s a whole process, not something you’re doing on a whim. All promotional material would either be shipped ahead of time or with the product. We’ve been able to label buttons and products for a long time w/o using an independent computer + screen to do it.
I would assume that in most cases, they arent running a mid day update, they would give prior notice that over night X will happen so make sure product is what the label is in the morning.
Being said, I also assume there is some custom-ability to the screens, as in they are probably touch screens or have a a physical button behind the control to allow to cycle through available products to ensure the right product is displayed. That or there is a network controller somewhere on premise (potentially linked to their menu manager) that decides what screen displays what.
It’s a 7-Eleven Slurpee machine. If a new flavor was coming, it wouldn’t be a surprise, and they’d know well in advance (well managment would). Now I don’t frequent 7-Eleven so I can’t say how often they swap out flavors, but most places tend to just maintain outside of special promotions or discontinued products.
There’d be no reason for those to be touchscreens, they’re not like the Coke Freestyle that lets people pick. Those Slurpee machines are manually controlled by the customer. It being a touchscreen or a server somewhere… is needless over-engineering and a bunch of e-waste to replace an insert. A physical insert never had a CVE. A phsyical insert doesn’t need tech support (both for the OS + application + networking + hardware) on top of the maintenance for the machine (the parts that cool and make the Slurpee). A physical insert cannot crash. The only thing adding a screen + Linux + whatever else does is make the presentation a bit cleaner (at an increase in cost and waste). This is like the places that replaced the glass doors with giant screens (sorry for linking to anything Reddit) https://www.reddit.com/r/chicago/comments/p8s7ab/the_cvs_on_irvingpulaski_installed_these_screens/#lightbox
I can’t see reddit on my network(I blocked it to avoid using it) so I will take your word for it, I’m assuming its the store freezer/produce doors with ads.
Being said, there are reasons to technologicalize the process. those type of low level mini pc’s or controllers last generally years at a time, and are a setup once and done type operation. They are also super cheap and can be distributed across the entire chain once instead of needing to get material, print it, and ship it every time a new product or design is done. Sending stuff over the wire is cheap, shipping marketing material is not. It’s generally sent from a different company all-together, and either centralized into a distribution center to be shipped to the stores, or shipped directly to the store from the producer.
It also allows for video based distribution which allows for more info on the screen (for better or for worse because this also could be ads).
I think it’s dumb that it’s an individual system it seems for every screen, but I expect that HDMI matrix hardware is more expensive vs just having them separate, but regardless cost wise it’s a no brainer to make it digital over having physical inserts, even if its more wasteful.
Pepsi isn’t going to print an insert for every machine. They’re gonna print an insert that fits the machine you have to rent from Pepsi. Same with Coke.
To show animated things and different flavours when they change without changing the sticker
“Animated”.
You mean… advertising.
Yes?
For some reason I now want to kill everyone that I see around me, is that a bad sign?
Are you worried about your sleeper agent robo killer programming being activated by the soda machine?
BSOD: the Blue Slurpee of Death
It made me take a log dump. Do not recommend.
I’m just glad slurpee machines run on Linux and not Windows CE. 😌
Boot up obviously.
That’s a systemd slurpee.
