What if the internet connection that connects the Raspberry Pi and thus the whole setup to the system to web services is interrupted while a customer ordering. The Firebase Realtime Database would also go offline and, as a result, the order will fail.

If the internet goes down for some time, Firebase will become unavailable and the app will stop working and won’t take any new orders, which means business loss for Frshly and loss of brand. Also, the food items stored in the vending machines have a shelf life.

To implement offline feature in order-app & token-app, we set up a local database in Mongo DB with the help of Node.js. We also used Reddis to store & process the order and sync it with the server once the setup is online.

We used an RTC clock to resolve the issue of difference in internet and actual time when the internet is down, which cause unexpected errors since Raspberry Pi doesn’t have inbuilt CMOS. When the internet goes down, the order can still be placed with a default dummy date, which will be taken over by the internet clock when the system is back online.

Another problem

The tablets we terribly slow which was frustrating the users. The UI was also out of date and lacked essential features.

Simple solution

We fully revamped the design of Outlet App (Tablet App) as per the new material design style & converted the cross-platform app to a native android experience.