Re:TimeTrack Raspberry Pi
by pfundstein on Thursday July 08, 2021 @07:46PM
(#27778965)
Big/old companies tend to get entrenched in their ways, I see this everywhere as a MSP, spouting idioms like "If it ain't broke don't fix it!" and "There's no need to reinvent the wheel".
Ten years ago I worked at a place that used single board DOS machines for clocking in and out. And this wasn't just at the beginning and end of a shift, this was every time they worked on a new batch of parts. It became very hard to keep these machines operating, you couldn't get spare parts for them anymore without scrounging other machines.
It was a medical device manufacturer, so it wasn't just company inertia holding them back - any change had to go through regulatory compliance. The company was in the midst of replacing their planning and tracking system when I left, and they've changed ownership twice, so I presume they've managed to replace those old systems too. I shudder to think of the problems they're having if they haven't.
I don't completely blame them... just disappointed. They had supply chain problems for their current computers (granted, their own making by not upgrading as time went on) and they were thinking "can we get 10k of these devices? They're all sold out currently... at best, we could get a few hundred, not enough to redo all the current stores if we were to go down this path."
We (some coworkers and I) back when RPis were becoming more mainstream (6... 7 years ago or so) of converting these systems to RPis. This would free up a dozen systems per store (about 3500 machines) and reduce power consumption per store from 70w/machine (estimate) to 5w/machine. So, lets go with round numbers.
70w * 10 machines = 0.7 KWh; 5w * 10 machines = 0.05 KWh.
Take that to 24h/day and you've got 17 kWh/day. $0.11/ kWh and we're at about $2/day/store... $600/day across all stores for the old systems and $40/day for RPis.
And that's not taking into consideration the hardware and the "ok, we keep a stock of a dozen RPis at each store with SD cards for the different departments and their configuration..."
Anyways... the company didn't go for it at the time. It was rather disappointing for us. It would have been a rather neat project that I still believe could have saved a good bit of money in just electrical costs (and more in hardware costs and longevity). I'm not sure if they've modernized that part of the stores since or if they're still scrounging eBay.