im an MIS personnel for a catering company into restaurant business..i was assigned for a new project and i wasn't sure if this is the right place to ask, but did any of you guys had any idea of how to integrate Symbian phones/palms that can be used to take orders in the restaurant.
the scenario is like this, waitress/waiters will be equipped with a wireless kit that will enable them to take orders and upon completion, an order will be printed in the kitchen and another copy will be fwded to the till and prepared as the bill when the customer wants the bill. therefore, there must be a symbian s/ware equipped in those wireless kit.
can anyone advice does such software exists?
thanks in advance
I haven't heard of such apps for any Symbian based device yet (which doesn't meant it doesn't exist, of course). I do recall having heard of such PocketPC and PalmOS apps for WLAN based PDA's, though (even seen them in use, sometimes).
Anyway, a regular phone and its keypad would be slow for text entry in a situation like this. A QWERTY keyboard or good pen-based input would be better, I suppose.
And for use locally in a restaurant, a WLAN based device would be best.
The only Symbian based WLAN device with a QWERTY keyboard today is the Nokia 9500.
There are devices with pen-input such as Nokia 7710, Sony Ericsson P910 or Motorola A1000, but they don't have WLAN so this type of app would have to be used over Bluetooth (short range) or the cellular network (expensive).
N/A wrote:I haven't heard of such apps for any Symbian based device yet (which doesn't meant it doesn't exist, of course). I do recall having heard of such PocketPC and PalmOS apps for WLAN based PDA's, though (even seen them in use, sometimes).Anyway, a regular phone and its keypad would be slow for text entry in a situation like this. A QWERTY keyboard or good pen-based input would be better, I suppose.
And for use locally in a restaurant, a WLAN based device would be best.
The only Symbian based WLAN device with a QWERTY keyboard today is the Nokia 9500.
There are devices with pen-input such as Nokia 7710, Sony Ericsson P910 or Motorola A1000, but they don't have WLAN so this type of app would have to be used over Bluetooth (short range) or the cellular network (expensive).
thanks for the reply.
yeah i did gave a thought about it about the input. non-qwerty input will be a huge problem when there were large bookings in the restaurant and it will certainly consume alot of time.
your suggestion about using bluetooth was a good idea and certainly we need a s/w on the server side to communicate with the device. an order 'template' can be setup on those devices and all the waitress can do is key in codes that rep each meal, and the output will be transferred back to the server and processed by slotting in those datas in a database that will then transferred into a spreadsheet with 2 outputs; 1 to the kitchen for execution and 1 to the till for bill prep.
if i were to code this software on my own using Symbian, what sort of compiler should i use? and what kind of requirement should i have to test later on?
thanks
In all honesty its going to be something that may be difficult for you to do on your own. Most developers use Code Warrior, although there are some other options too.
Development costs money and I'm guessing that really you'll be wanting to use something off the shelf.
Symbian devices are probably not best suited to such a task as noted above. After its not like you really need the telephony functions. I would suspect that a better option would be a PDA with wifi built in, but I'm not really qualified to answer beyond that.
That said some sort of list system could be quite effective. You could do the transfer by Bluetooth or you could do it by SMS (especially if you have short codes representing meals). The server could listen for sms and process them as necessary. The problem will be in customising orders (e.g. extra sauce / no sauce).
Another option would be to develop a small mobile website that has a web form you fill in and is delivered by email to the server. Of course the advantage of that would be that it would be cross platform.
I think the above may be overkill though, there's probably custom solutions out there for less.