This is a re-implementation of the Makespace Badger, originally https://github.com/Makespace/Badger
This is used at Makespace for members to print labels for different purposes.
A member can scan their door access fob, and a name-badge will be printed based on information stored in a sqlite database.
If the tag does not exist in the database, the user will be prompted to add their information.
Labels can be printed with free-form text. Here, Badger-NG improves over the original by allowing an arbitrary number of lines of arbitrary length. It will attempt to adjust the font-size of each line to make it fit (this logic is not very smart).
This is an enhancement on top of the original Badger, allowing labels to be printed which include dates, suitable for labelling things in a way which meets the Makespace storage requirements
Just scanning a fob will default to printing a name badge (if the fob is enrolled), the same as the original Badger. If the fob is not enrolled, the UI will allow the user to enter their information. The UI will also populate and switch to the "Name Badge" tab.
Holding down the left-hand button while scanning a fob will open the "Edit Tag" screen, allowing a user to update the information associated with their fob. This is functionally the same as the original Badger.
Holding down the right-hand button while scanning a fob will open the "Storage Label" screen, populating it with the user's data from the database, and a "use-by date" of 30 days in the future. The user can adjust the date as necessary and print the label.
Scanning the "General" tag attached to the desk will open the "General Label" screen, where a user can enter any text they want and print a label.
The three label types can also be accessed manually (without a fob) via the UI. The "Edit Tag" screen can only be accessed by first scanning a fob, to prevent inadvertent modification of other members' data.
The original Badger code was written in Python 2, which became end-of-life on January 1st 2020. Badger-NG uses Python 3
The original Badger code was hard to extend (which was what I was originally trying to do), as it intermixed the UI, database and label generation code, and also had multiple top-level scripts.
Badger-NG is designed to be more modular, so that we can easily change different aspects - for example how labels are rendered, how the database is accessed, how fobs are scanned. This would allow us to use the main members' database as the source of information in the future.
The original Badger code used a cups driver for the printer, meaning that
cups and the specific driver module needed to be installed. Badger-NG has its
own Python 3 implementation of a driver for the printer. Its only dependency
for the printer is the pyusb library.
Badger-NG doesn't make any attempt to interact with the system screensaver (yet) - so it can't wake the screen when a user scans a fob.
The original Badger system blanked the screen after periods of inactivity, and woke it again at appropriate times - but it seems to leave the backlight on, so presumably doesn't actually result in any power savings. Badger-NG should improve on that if/when support is added.
pip3 install -r requirements.txt
It depends on:
- PIL (Pillow)
- pyserial
- pyusb
- tkinter (part of standard Python 3 installation)
- playsound
There's quite a few command-line options and different commands, but for the main UI:
python3 main.py ui --port=/dev/ttyUSB0 --printer=d450 --database=badge.db --sound
The 10mm margin should be implemented more cleanly. At the moment, the label size is just reduced by 10mm before instantiating Label() It would be better to pass a margin down to the Label() class and have it handle it.- The sound filenames are hard-coded, and the audio files themselves aren't
checked in to the repo.
- Find or create a beep which we can be sure we can include in the repo.
- Make the filenames parameters
- Custom font support?
- Link up to the central database
- Make the different label options more obvious