My setup, am I mad?

Hey guys,

I would like to introduce my setup for my restaurant and bakery, we have been open now for 9 years now and I have done all the networking and pc setup myself, and I have no qualification what so ever, so I’m sure I have asked many a redundant question over the last 4 years on this forum.

I have a server running Server 2012, plus an office PC for adding products and playing around with new cool things for SambaPOS. most of my pc’s are running Windows 7 & 10. are 2.5Ghz with 4 gig ram.

The chef has a 15" touch screens that I added a VGA splitter with another screen to so the chefs on the other end of the line can see his mirror image but this obviously isn’t a touch screen because of the slitter.

I’m adding another 19’ inch monitor next to the 15" touch screen in the kitchen so I can use another ticket view on the 19" (non touch screen) for display purposes. Let me explain: many times the chef misses tickets that are added during lunch time as they are way below out of sight on the small 15" using a number 9 font. Touch screens are very expensive in South Africa, so unfortunately I have to work around this by using 15" touch screens, otherwise the chef would have a nice big screen!

So the 19" will have a better view of the tickets in a better layout, but the 15" touch we will send orders with. The 19" will also have a VGA splitter on it and will show the extra screen all the way down the line as well.

In total the kitchen has 4 screen one main touch screen and two monitors.

Additional to this on the hot pass I will have a smaller 17" monitor just to show the runner what hes taking and where, as we are using runners more and more, so the exact order they are not sure of, as a fail safe I also have a ticket printer in the kitchen which usually goes with the food to the table to make sure we have all the special requests done.

Our food is shipped from one kitchen to two different seating areas about 60 meters apart, so setting this up has been fun and very frustrating over the last year.

We have two touch screens for waiters at the restaurant front of house and another two touch screens for the waiters at our coffee shop (two different businesses) Plus another pc that runs a touch screen for the hot drinks maker with a splitter to the specialty drinks maker that are in the prep area.

I actually dug a trench and laid 100m of ethernet cable in conduit to my switch in our coffee shop & bakery for all this networking possibility.

Food is ordered from all seating areas (four in total) and all gets send to the main kitchen, runners send food out to the right table, specialty drinks are ordered and will appear in the drinks kitchen that is 60 meters away from food kitchen, and then the runners will send it to the right area as well.

I have 10 Pc’s runnning 6 touch screens monitors and 7 additional monitors (using VGA splitters). running of 4 switches with about a total of 200m of ethernet cable between the two businesses, we have 100 seats under cover and inside and about 80 seats in the gardens.

My next experiment is with V5 and the kitchen timers and colours and then finally introducing tablets before December.

All this using Sambapos and this wonderful forum, on a side note I remember when JohnS and emre were the guiding figures on the forum during my first exposure to sambapos using V2 in this same restaurant.

Like today we have @QMcKay and kendash and the many other guys who help out, basically If you have asked a question on the forum and got help by one of the members and re-posted your solution you are a contributor to this forum and for that I thank you.

We have a new website if you would like to have a look at our restaurant ZUCCHINI (still busy with better photos)

Some feedback would be great.

And Thank you all for making it possible… LONG LIVE THE SCREENSHOT TUTORIAL !

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Nice setup, still looking for a client wanting to take the leap into a kitchen screen, they all seem a little scared/technophobic LOL

Website looks good love the saddle stools :slight_smile:

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Sounds like an interesting setup, and illustrates the flexibility and capacity that SambaPOS offers and can support!

180 seats, wow! Sounds like you have a busy successful business, made efficient by the power of SambaPOS!

I don’t think I ever ran V2 in production, but 2.99c was the first version I toyed around with. V3 was the first version I used in production, then V4 and finally V5 even in it’s Beta.

I learned a lot from @JohnS … he was the original “teacher” that got me off the ground and up and running with his knowledge and tutorials. Great guide in the “early days”. It wasn’t until he and Emre helped me navigate through a GC setup I wanted that I finally came to really understand how things worked. With that new-found confidence, I put together my very first Tutorial for Gift Certificate Sales and Redemption.

From that point onward, I continued to read the forum and learned even more, mostly by trying to figure out how to build a solution for other user’s ideas that I might implement myself. Finally, I asked if Emre might want or allow me to be elevated to Moderator since I spent so much time here anyway.

Then along came @Jesse , who was much like me when I was first introduced to SambaPOS - a guy eager to learn and quick to understand and give back… I look back to when he was asking questions that I provided answers to. That didn’t last long and soon was no longer the case - he took SambaPOS on head-first and became addicted just like me to answering questions and putting together solutions. The things we have done make me proud.

I want to also give kudos to others who seem to have really stepped up in the recent past, and continue to be very active, taking some of the heat off of us and contributing in great ways. It is fantastic to see and gives this community a much more rounded and complete support-base than ever before (in no particular order, and forgive me if I missed your name - I will come back to edit this list) …

@RickH
@sukasem
@JTRTech
@markjw
@pauln

… and of course, none of it was at all possible without the guru himself: @emre !

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Wow @stephanhenning that is very impressive. @QMcKay summed it all up quite well there is not much more I could say. I would have to say the single tutorial that really got me hooked was a kitchen display setup by @JohnS I took that thing and studied it and then I wanted more. Next I noticed @QMcKay and his advanced tutorials so naturally I dug right in and practiced with them.

My first real big project that challenged me the most was when I built my first Quick Service setup and attempted some advanced state flows for returns etc. QMcKay really helped me a lot with some silly questions and some more advanced stuff in fact I think it was some discussions spawning from there that we really started to click our ideas and we started to feed off each others discussions.

@emre has made something truly impressive and its beyond just a solution for POS. Its very addicting to me and I find myself having to restrain sometimes from it because just like a big video game I would get lost in time with SambaPOS.

PS. I really like your website very professional, clean, and laid out well. Your design fits in my own taste I love a clean professional design. Your menu is very well done.

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I still can’t believe those bar stools :slight_smile: awesome.

Just a quick FYI - when I showed my uncle the stools as being a ex jockey thought he would like the idea to make one for his tack room with an old saddle…
The point sorry… The mobile version cuts the last lines of the function text on the home page on mobile/responsive version, might be worth just checking through the responsive side on other pages of the site to make sue there are no others :slight_smile:
I was using an iPhone 6s encase its size specific.
Very minor point just wanted to let you know.

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Hahaha, I can understand the assumption, we unfortunately situated 12 km outside of a small town, in a very touristy and seasonal (read; dead in winter) area, actually I got lots of space so I’ll fill the that space with book cases, couches and seats

![quote=“JTRTech, post:5, topic:10142”]
The point sorry… The mobile version cuts the last lines of the function text on the home page on mobile/responsive version, might be worth just checking through the responsive side on other pages of the site to make sue there are no others :slight_smile:
[/quote]

Thank you, appreciate the input