Good afternoon, dear masters of their craft!
This is my first article, I will try to be interesting. Many years ago (oh horror) when I was super energetic, young and my eyes were burning, I wanted to automate everything that moves and does not move. I felt my endless possibilities and was sure of myself 100% or more, there was not one unsolvable problem in front of me and everything was burning in my hands. However, over the years, the trackbar from youth to wisdom kept moving towards the second. So over time came an experience that is the son of difficult mistakes and, alas, there is a friend of the genius of paradoxes.
Looking ahead, I will say that many processes in the civil service, where your faithful servant worked and works, has automated, developed and put into operation systems that significantly (in 4 hours!) Reduced the complexity and time of information processing in various government departments.
It was 2012 ...
By then, I was rich in experience, reputation and wound scars from failure and failure. At one of the planning meetings, I came up with the idea of introducing an electronic queue into our management. At that time, the department was located in a 4-storey building and the mechanism for receiving and processing documents covered all floors, where it was necessary, in fact, to occupy at least 4 lines for 1 case. Knowing all this, I understood that there was little to do. At the next planning meeting, I presented my project, which was in three parts to automate the part of receiving citizens. I presented a ready-made solution, for the price it was then about 3 average salaries in the city, if we talk about the price for a state institution. I presented the project on a projector, after seeing which everyone liked it, but as always it happens - there is no money.
Since childhood, I have not been able to give up and despair. Having received the blessing of the leader, I went to a higher authority to ask for money and justify the need - to ask for money for the queue. I would like to say that in 2012 there were no such systems in our departments with a daily reception of citizens over 100 people a day. Having knocked on all the thresholds, I still got a refusal for the same reason.
So this project was buried, or rather buried, but there was a pulse. A little over a year later, I was fired. Well, you know how it happens, probably the more talented always become objectionable. Two years of wandering in the desert, I returned to my native place. Well, like in Game of Thrones).
And here I am again doing the same thing as in the best movies about time loops. And here again the planning meeting, but already all new faces and 2016, and I again push the speech about the need for this invention. However, what I think I have learned a little (like in the same movie "Source Code") something needs to be changed little by little, so I made "an offer that the management cannot refuse" - I suggested that I make a complex of an electronic queue for 0 rubles. And here I got approval from everywhere and from everyone! Well, a small victory is also a victory! and It was a great start to start.
Such a positive attitude has always spoiled me. As one senior person said, "an artist must be hungry." Fueled by hunger, initiative and endless desire, I just got up and went. I went to the server room and started looking for something to do. As a case, I used an old (still white when it was sold) case of the system unit. There could be no question of any sensor. I'm not so cool as to make a sensor with my own hands. Therefore, I decided to make the screen simple, without touch input. The functionality I conceived as simple as possible, being a programmer with a long experience for myself, I sang that the program should help and be a tool and not a person for the program. In my software, I have always put the "one-button interface" first, systems where there is more automated than manual,this is how the terminal interface initially had only 3 buttons. It will then become overgrown with rich functionality and grace, but for now it's already 2017.
From March to May 2017, I was engaged in the creation of the terminal. One of the most difficult tasks was the organization of printing. An interesting fact, or just luck, I found a POS printer on aliexpress with a discount for over 700 rubles. The printer took only small rolls and did not know how to cut coupons. Yes, yes, a stronger client could pull out the entire tape instead of tearing off. Fortunately, I was born in the 80s and I had a happy childhood, experience with an iron constructor allowed me to become an iron constructor (just kidding). Conceiving (I could not find a more suitable word) the belt change system and attaching the cut blade in half from the saw for metal, I was able to make a cutting system by pulling the coupon up. The saw teeth were unevenly located, slightly at an angle, and the guide parts from the iron constructor made the paper crawl down so thatthat it was fashionable to take it only by tearing it off. Here's a trick.
Little by little, the software part was made, which consisted of three modules: terminal, annunciator and inviter.
I did not mention that the system is called ELECTRA.
During the first tests, I ran into the problem that the driver did not want to work from under my software, in the plan it stopped unwinding the roll only for a certain length, instead it was unwinding exactly A4 length - 270mm. Without solving this problem, clients would take with them, as they say, a rewound roll just in case), for use as needed).
After a while, I was able to cope with the driver, my software and paper feed.
An attentive reader will ask, how can you order a coupon? Here there were different options. I took a joystick from my eldest son, soldered an anti-vandal button to it and screwed it into the iron case with a steel nut from above. The comrades in the shop joked that this is in direct accordance with the Russian spirit and manner.
After 2 months, I realized that I was exhausted and tired. Each revision or replacement of a part required opening the "monoblock" and it was not convenient. Therefore, following the best Russian traditions, I decided to make a folding part like a KAMAZ cab. After spending a little more time and screwing on the steel door hinges, I made the supporting part rise with ease and resting on the tripod could work like under a car.
Work on the terminal was approaching the first test run, so the question of aesthetics was slowly brewing.
It is not easy to make an ideal monolith or monoblock with your own hands to a marketable appearance, but as I always say to myself in my life: “we compensate for the lack of funds with talent”. I bought a blue PF-115 and, having painted every metal part in a blue gloss, rebuilt it again, and carefully pasted over the perimeter of the block with white plastic, which is sold for installing windows.
By June 2017, the terminal was already as if from a military plant for the production of tanks, irons and intercoms. It was executed in 2 colors: white and blue and four colors.
The annunciator module was extremely simple, it was just a remote monitor with speakers connected to the system unit, on which the server part was also spinning.
The third module, the inviter module, was extremely simple, it had only two functions: to invite and repeat invitations of those who were already invited. Its interface contained only two tables: the first - coupons in the corridor, the second - the invited ticket / window.
And so, October 2017 is the first combat launch. To say that I was worried to say nothing. I stood facing the noisy crowd of people and had to adjust and explain everything.
Of course, specialists from the Citizenship Department also helped me.
Then I prayed to everyone and everything so that only this presentation of mine would not fail. I arrived at work that day at 6 in the morning, and work began at 8:48. I rechecked every few minutes.
Everything went smoothly. Within a couple of months, people learned and got used to it. The specialists were very pleased. Visitors too. Many reported an increase in productivity and a decrease in anxiety and difficulty in tedious waiting.
Now citizens sit quietly, waiting for their number, and specialists coordinate the workload so that the queue is as productive as possible, for example: if a person has a question for 40 minutes and in front of him 4 for 2 minutes (just get a certificate), then the tony is released and the crowds are not.
We came to this result within a year.
From 2018 to 2019, my system has been significantly improved, it has a system for recording via the Internet and by phone, an automated system of the necessary directions, a change in voice, and the annunciator began to provide additional information for citizens.
