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cstuckey
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November 23, 2012 at 9:56 pm
We are looking at purchasing 3 devices for the purpose of scanning event espresso generated tickets at our event. Because we will be dealing a few thousand over the weekend, speed of scan is the most important factor here. Is there any device that works particularly well with scanning tickets? If there is no difference has any verified the scanning working on an iPod Touch, or a budget Android tablet?
Thanks
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Seth Shoultes
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November 24, 2012 at 12:45 am
I recommend the iPod touch. It seems to work much better than the Android devices.
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cstuckey
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November 24, 2012 at 6:01 am
I am not as familiar with Apple products as with Android devices. Is there a particular generation of iPod Touch I would need to purchase? I am unsure if the earlier models with cameras are able to update to the latest iOS, or if having the latest iOS event matters to Event Espresso. Thanks!
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Josh
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November 26, 2012 at 9:03 am
I would go with the current generation (5th), or the one previous to the current generation (4th). You’ll want to avoid the older generations that do not allow updating to the latest version of iOS. The 4th and 5th generation devices have better cameras too, which can help when scanning in low-light situations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod_Touch#Specifications
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cstuckey
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November 30, 2012 at 8:45 pm
I appreciate the suggestion from you both. I have gone ahead and purchased 2 4th gen iPod touches. Unfortunately they don’t work well at all. The default ticket size generated by the PDF is too small and attempting to scan in multiple different lighting situations and from every angle and distance we could come up with just refused to scan. Making the ticket bigger solved the problem, but I know this is going to be a huge issue at the door.
Last year our event had 2100 pre-registrations that we are now using EventEspresso for. The majority of these people aren’t going to be able to have their ticket scanned because they aren’t going to think about their tickets size causing this issue. Some of the damage is already done because people have their tickets, but is there some way to increase the default size of the ticket? Here is a sample ticket: cstuckey.com/sample.pdf
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Seth Shoultes
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November 30, 2012 at 9:12 pm
Sorry for the trouble. It looks like this is using an outdated version of the ticketing plugin. We have made several major improvements to this plugin over the last 4 to 6 months. It also looks like you are using Event Espresso 3.1.28.2.P, which needs to be updated to 3.1.28.5.P (or 3.1.29.P due out Monday).
I would highly recommend updating the ticketing plugin and the espresso-services API files to the latest versions, because we have made so many improvements to it and have made the QR codes much easier to scan.
Then a few weeks before the event, send out reminder notices. You can mention that their tickets have been updated and they will need to download the new ones. You can also include the QR within the email and mention that the email can be scanned from their mobile devices if they don’t want to bring a printed ticket.
I certainly hope that helps. Please let us know if you have any additional questions.
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cstuckey
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November 30, 2012 at 10:14 pm
Seth, thanks for your help. In regards to the update, I wish I could update EE, I sent in a request for a new key but I haven’t gotten it.
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cstuckey
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December 1, 2012 at 12:31 am
I have gone ahead and taken suggested option #3 to update Event Espresso, and am up to date on all the plugins. I also have the new ticketing option working as well (versus the one I have been using). While the QR code is bigger than before it is still difficult to read and needs really good lighting to do so. I will be inside a hotel when doing this, so I am not counting on having great lighting. Is there a way to make the QR code even bigger?
Thank you again for your help.
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cstuckey
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December 1, 2012 at 1:09 am
I did some digging and modified the Google URL you are using to set it to some different widths. I have found 200×200 to be a great size for scanning without issue and it doesn’t take up too much space on your default ticket format. I would suggest making that update standard because I can’t be the only one with this issue. Also I would appreciate not having to modify the ticketing functions.php every time you guys release a new version.
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Seth Shoultes
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December 1, 2012 at 5:15 pm
If you look towards the very bottom of this page:
https://eventespresso.com/wiki/espresso-ticketing/
There is information about moving the ticket templates to a safe place.
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