Hey all!
 

So ever since I posted a while back about the new OpenERP touchscreen POS client I've had a storm of interest.  The OpenERP POS touchscreen interface has gone under a massive and incredibly intelligent evolution since my first blog post.  It now does much of its work server side and uses backbone.js and underscore for  doing some snazzy AJAX magic.  Flywheel has been writing a lot of node.js/CommonJS applications and we can attest to the robust nature of this approach for such a highly interactive, rich web client.

Thanks to the OpenERP S.A. team this is now a very rock solid web client, and it has a very bright future in the open source ERP world.  Note that I had nothing to do with the development of this client whatsoever, was just pulling and testing it for projects we were working on.

Heres an announcement of the latest release:

OpenERP is going social with the launch of the new version 6.1.

http://www.openerp.com/node/1056

And within that, a blurb about the much awaited Touchscreen POS:

Touchscreen Point of Sales 

OpenERP 6.1 provides a new module for outlets. This module is 100% web, works offline and automatically synchronizes with the OpenERP server when the connection is restored. The POS module is compatible with all PC tablets and iPad, offering multiple payment methods. Product selection can be done in several ways: using a barcode reader, browsing through categories of products or via a text search.

You can now check out the awesome Touchscreen POS client via the demo available at http://www.openerp.com and/or deploy it locally or on your server to check it out.  No need for a bunch of bazaar branching and moving around different versions - its all there!

So this is certainly a workaround, and we will likely create a redmine plugin just for handling this.  However, the way its working now is pretty nice and flexible, so I really don't consider writing a module to be incredibly imminent - though using the jquery plugin that etherpad lite provides could provide some really powerful tools for users.

Regardless, this is how is what you need:

1. A Running Redmine Instance (A Bitnami redmine stack is always a good choice if you are just getting started)
2. A Running Etherpad Lite Instance (Here is the git repo: follow the instructions and get it running under a daemon!)

Embedding Iframes in Redmine?!

First, you will need to install the Redmine Wiki HTML Utility (unless you have found some other way to be able to embed Iframes in redmine).  Note that, because this is just a simple wiki extension and the database is not involved, you do not need to run rake.  This extension will allow you to 'inject' raw HTML, CSS and Javascript in any redmine textile areas (yes!  wiki, issues, project descriptions - the sky is the limit!).
  Its just handy to have all around!

Throw in a 'lil CSS

Add some CSS to the application.css file of your current theme, or find some other upgrade happy way of adding the css:

#content iframe {border:1px dotted #656565; overflow:hidden; width:95%; height:600;}

You may want to use different or more specific CSS selectors, depending on whether you have iframes.  This CSS seems to work pretty well for me, but I would be glad to take suggestions.  Setting the width using a percentage is a good idea for fluid width themes (we are using the basecamp redmine theme).  The height is static - I could probably do something fancier but it works for now.

Embed that Etherpad-Lite Document!

Now, go into redmine somewhere and embed your etherpad lite document.  You do NOT need to go into etherpad-lite and create a document - a document is created each time you visit a URL beneath the etherpad path (makes writing extensions incredibly easy, huh?).

So one thing that used to trouble me with using Drush was that finding modules to enable could kind of be a chore.  Especially when, lets say, you have a client who has over 200 modules on their site.

What I used to do was something like this:

$~: drush pml --package="notifications" --status="Enabled" --type="Module"

Now, that works pretty well - except when, for example, you may be looking for a module with notifications in the name that isnt part of the notifications package.  We all know how  complex this can get!

So, one day it dawned on me to use grep alongside drush!  Duh!  (grep is available in most *nix systems, and on windows with cygwin installed).

$~: drush pml --status="Enabled" | grep notifications

You may get more exacting results with this! :)

So I have received quite a bit of attention regarding my post a couple months ago regarding the OpenERP Touchscreen POS System which is currently in Develoment.  Good news - there is much more to talk about here!

I don't have time to prepare it just yet, but I will be putting together a post shortly explaining how to build, deploy and configure the latest and greatest in OpenERP POS Touchscreen awesomeness.

So,  a project I have been mulling on for years is finally beginning to come to fruition.  Called the re.rooting collaborative, it is an initiative to combine the efforts of alternative economy practicioners, stakeholders and motivated software developers to begin a concerted, community effort to imagine, develop and extend open source software to enable everything from various types of co-ops, buying clubs, local food systems to microlending and community currencies.

Yes, there are already many projects underway.  We will be featuring these projects and others, and offer an aggregated space for raising capital to develop specific functionality, and a space for combining ideas and documenting needs to better accomodate the wide array of businesses, organizations and efforts underway.

What was the impetus?

Hot on the heels of two events that I presented at, the Entrepreneurs for Sustainability Startup-Showcase, where I described this project, as well as the Ohio Employee Ownership Center Conference where I presented on our worker collective model for Flywheel Tech Collective, we found that there is substantial interest on the side of entrepreneurs, practitioners and stakeholding organziations in low-cost, appropriate open source solutions to meet the needs of more non-conventional business models.

We have already been working with our colleagues at the Future Forward Institute to begin imagining new frameworks and models, and to gather information about various existing solutions and how they could be adapted to meet the needs of these kinds of entities.  We are already working with various business entities where we are adapting these solutions to their needs as co-ops or social enterprises, but our interest is growing in creating a community-driven platform from which to mobilize resources, input and stakeholders as new projects to begin to meet emerging or existing needs.

Where is it at now?

So I happened across a tweet via Fabien Pinckaers ( #fpopenerp ) the other day, dropping a hint about a new (and of course modular & very extensible) web-based touchscreen POS system being developed by the core team.  The only glimpse I had of this web client was via the two urls he mentioned, pointing to a wonderful, snazzy touchscreen GUI.  It looked like this:

So, needless to say, I was enticed.  There are numerous ways to interface OpenERP-server with other touchscreen POS systems, such as Adiempere's POS, OpenBravo, and others.  Data would be moved around via a TerminaTOOR/Kettle kind of bulk data synchronization scheme.   The pos.module,  out of the box, has all the functionality - but even in the snazzy new web interface lacked the true interaction design of a touchscreen POS system - large buttons, immediate information and functionality.  an on-screen 10-key numerical pad, etc. I will give the alternative, KDE-based desktop client Koo some creds for making a good crack at this a while back, and really kind of squeezing the most possible out of the de-facto inline tree view interface.

But really, this is one of OpenERP's greatest weakpoints - the Point of Sale system - until now!  It's about time that OpenERP's core team start taking on a BHAG like this.  I'm sure it has quite a ways to go, but I would love to  help make this happen - and as soon as possible, as we have clients who need this now!

Finding the Project on Launchpad

I knew the project had to be somewhere on launchpad - but this turned out to be a tricky venture.  In retrospect, I probably could have taken a better approach and just meticulously plowed through the openerp codebase on launchpad... but I didn't even know who was developing it at the time - had only just seen glimpses!

But just tonight, I had a lucky break and found the OpenERP eventbrite schedule for the Community & Partners Days (wish I could have been there!) and there discovered a pad from a disucssion on the new web toucschreen POS - http://pad.openerp.com/touchscreen-pos

Right at the beginning of the etherpad document, I see the magical branch name:

 lp:~openerp-dev/openobject-client-web/trunk-proto61-pos

So, if you are interested in branching and playing around, just install it like you would the web client - and experience the magic!  Also, that etherpad will come into play further on in this post, so keep it open!

OpenERP web pos using.... PHP & JSON?!

Yes - gasp - thats right!  From what I can tell it seems that this new web addon is using PHP to talk to openerp-server via JSON-RPC .  This is an unexpected, but very keen move by the development team.  They are using a jquery project - Mottie Keyboard for the on-screen keyboard, as well as jquery 1.4.4 and jquery-ui 1.8.10 on the backend. That little toolset right there is going to prove for loads of fun in building a really engaging user experience.  It even seems that they are using a project called Dhtmlx Grid for a highly enabled in-line grid editing experience.

Then we have one of the workhorses behind it all, main.py  (the controller for this, the openerp-web addon module called point_of_sale) that is handling the json-rpc requests and iterfacing with openerp-server.

Lastly, another file of note is the static/openerp/js/pos.js file that is handling a lot of the form validation, inline editing and many many of the other UI and direct functionality elements of this new system.  The work that went into this is quite impressive, and will likely go a long way in helping OpenERP to offer not only an amazing POS system, but quite possibly one of the best open source POS systems available (considering the powerful backend).

Banshee, in my opinion, is one of the best things that has happened to the Gnome Desktop.  Ever since it became the standard music player packaged with Ubuntu 10.10, it has changed the out-of-the-box Ubuntu experience (I do love me some rythymbox, of course).

One thing that Banshee lacks is some kind of visualization engine.  This is something I overlooked at first, but as I began recruiting friends to become Ubuntu users, this question kept popping up.

Well, after some research, I managed to find a  pretty decent solution.  OpenVP is an open source visualization platform, and since 2008 they have been releasing integrations with Banshee media player.

The banshee integration project is actively developed on gitorious, though you can find a more stable version in the ubuntu/debian package repository

Here is a sample of it at work (this setting is called 'inferno'):

Installing the bugger

Now I bet you want to install it, eh!?  Well, here goes.

1. If you are using Debian, you will need to make sure you have made the sid (unstable) package sources available.  If you are using Ubuntu, no need to worry, because as of this post, the 1.7.6 version was availble in the universe sources.

2. Now you can install the package from the repositories!

richard@localhost:$ sudo apt-get install banshee-extension-openvp

3. Voila!  Restart Banshee (if it was already open), queue up some music, and now you have visualizations in the 'Now Playing' view.  Use the controls in the top right.

Next Step: Installing from the Git Repo

The next installment of the banshee-visualizations deal is going to be to install from the gitorius repo, and thus be able to pull live developments!  Stay tuned!