Original thread here: Membership Kiosk
What
A permanent membership kiosk (screen+keyboard, built into an enclosure) would be available somewhere in the space to perform common tasks that cannot easily be done online or require physical access.
Why
There is an problem with how we currently issue door access tags. The plugin, which is used to identify unknown tags so they can be copied into the membership system, is not going to be supported for much longer. It’s quite possible it will break, and enrolling tags will go from being difficult to extremely difficult. Currently, there’s no direct replacement for this plugin. Also, the process of enrolling tags is quite clunky in general and requires copy pasting codes around and being able to pick out unknown tags from the door system by timestamp - all elements which are prone to error.
A better solution would be to allow tags to be issued and linked to accounts as they are issued. As is the case now, actual access is still only able to be given by a director - but the tag would be linked already by that point.
Also, there are a number of other things that we have issues with: printing new pictures for the member’s photo wall is very impractical. Paying for things outside of normal membership fees is not easily catered for, outside of casual cash donations. Many of these things could be addressed by a fixed kiosk physically located in the space, with the appropriate hardware.
How
Some work into the feasibility of this has already begun (see the original thread). particularly into the high priority tag enrolling problem. It is possible to run some code on a RPi3 with an RFID reader, plus some extra features added to the membership system, to enable a new member to be given a tag, present it to a reader, enter their email address and be sent an activation link to link the tag to their membership system account.
If this were to be built into a physical kiosk located somewhere in the space on a permanent basis, enrolling new tags would be possible very simply, as the hardware required to do this would be pre-configured and the correct software running to make the process work. By the same logic, other hardware could also be built into the kiosk - for example for taking contactless payments, or printing photos for the members photo wall.
Additionally, some new features would need to be added to the live membership system - this would need to be rolled out according to the usual release schedule after testing.
