Two monitors (POS & Kitchen) on one computer?

Version 4 V4 Question
1

With v4, could I use one computer (located under front counter) hardwired to touchscreen monitor running POS (located above counter) and a second monitor mounted in the kitchen for viewing tickets, connected by chromecast to the one computer?

I think I am asking if SambaPOS4 can run two instances at the same time, using the same database, on one computer, displaying the two SambaPOS sessions one per monitor. I am not a SambaPOS developer so I do not know if this question is reasonable.

Thank you.

[More context: We are about to open our first restaurant: carry-out, one POS person at counter, a cook and a wrap-the-sandwich-put-in-bag-hand-to-customer employee. Cooking takes about 10 minutes, so cook and preparer may need to view most recent 10 orders.]

2

You can enable multiple instances through the SambaSettings.txt located in c:\programdata\sambapos folder

open the file and set allowmultipleinstances to true.

I have not tested performance doing this but I would think you might get better performance with just buying a 2nd pc could be a small $100 mini pc.

1 Like
3

Thank you @Jesse for the quick response.

Version 4.1.82, the option is AllowMultipleClients. Setting to true did let me start two sessions of SambaPOS on the same computer (Windows 7 Home Premium, AMD Phenom II 2.9 GHz, 8 GB RAM). I am just testing the demo products which come with SambaPOS4, so have not done real-world performance testing, but performance seems ok.

I hear your recommendation for a cheap kitchen computer. My challenge is I don’t have a good place to put a computer in the kitchen, but I could mount a display screen to the wall. That constraint is making me lean toward a wireless signal for the kitchen display. Perhaps a better setup for me would be a desktop computer running the server and sending the kitchen display, with a Surface as the POS. Just ideas, no solution from me yet.

4

What about a thin all in 1 pc touchscreen?

2 Likes
5

Or a long VGA cable…??

6

I’m going off the origninal topic a little, but here is the system I hope to go with (buying hardware today, plan to set up this week).
A Windows 7 Pro computer under the counter, connected to a 15-inch touch screen on the counter as POS terminal. (No tablets yet, just one POS terminal, one cash drawer.)
An all-in-one touchscreen in the kitchen, about 23-inches, running SamboPOS locally but tied in to the data server at the front counter.
Usually, these two computers are not on the internet, just connected to each other.
Have a laptop back in the office for email, internet, etc.
Configure backups such that if the kitchen all-in-one breaks, the laptop can be used as a substitute (much smaller) kitchen monitor. If the main POS computer breaks, run kitchen all-in-one as the data server, with the laptop running POS at the counter.

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7

Setup SQL Express 2014 and you will have a nice setup. BTW if you need it here is a nice tutorial for SQL Express 2014 I wrote few months back.

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8

I have two Ello touchscreen monitors (one upstairs serving 4 waiters and one downstairs serving 2) connected to a single CPU. So this means it is possible for them to work concurrently by updating the POS system located on a single server/machine?

9

Yes, I was able to demonstrate two SambaPOS sessions running concurrently on the same computer, using the same database, and displaying on different monitors by following @Jesse directions in the earlier posts.

But the system I decided to use has two separate computers each running SambaPOS, but linked in the standard way to the server database. My intention with two computers is to have an emergency back-up available in case the main server breaks. I use the Database Tools and Dropbox to save the database and mirror to the backup computer at the close of each work session. How to use Database Tools Module