151–160 of 401 posts
On a related note, Chick-fil-A using Deep Learning models for object detection with MXNet to track how long fries have been waiting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Uuq_cX8b1M
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is it running in your car?
I have a custom piece of software that powers a display in the car, syncs and plays my music, and logs GPS. It also can manage audio and video recording and is intended to handle some future features[1] I have planned, so I wanted to over-spec rather than under-spec. [1] It's the same software that runs my home automation system, so an inevitable feature is my car and home units interacting, I wrote half of a piece o…
I once left the reading lights on; car was supposed to have turned it off when the doors locked, but somehow didn't. I found myself calling AAA in the morning to get a jumpstart.
If you want to see the actual hardware used at the restaurant, check out the previous blog post: https://medium.com/@cfatechblog/bare-metal-k8s-clustering-at... Spoiler: It's a stack of Intel NUCs.
Spoiler: It's a stack of Intel NUCs. Funny how the world has changed. I got my first taste of real computing from a guy in the next town who would buy dead PDP's from local McDonald's restaurants, fix them up, and sell them on. He always said the hardest part wasn't replacing broken parts, it was that invariably the machines would always have soda spilled in them, no matter where they were stored. Cleaning the inside…
If you want to see the actual hardware used at the restaurant, check out the previous blog post: https://medium.com/@cfatechblog/bare-metal-k8s-clustering-at... Spoiler: It's a stack of Intel NUCs.
Spoiler: It's a stack of Intel NUCs. Funny how the world has changed. I got my first taste of real computing from a guy in the next town who would buy dead PDP's from local McDonald's restaurants, fix them up, and sell them on. He always said the hardest part wasn't replacing broken parts, it was that invariably the machines would always have soda spilled in them, no matter where they were stored. Cleaning the inside…
One thing I question is what kind of WAN link a single chicken fast food restaurant can get, or is economical. A lot are in places where the only last mile ISP options will be adsl2+ over copper or docsis cablemodem. I don't see it being a good use of money to spend $600/mo to pay some local ISP for a dedicated 100Mbps line on a 5 year contract. But then again it's highly likely that what they do is not bandwidth int…
One thing I question is what kind of WAN link a single chicken fast food restaurant can get, or is economical At this point, I don't think it's a problem for CFA. CFA doesn't try to go into every little town in the nation like McDonald's. It's expansion is very deliberate and only seems to go into very high value locations, where internet presumably isn't a problem. Moreover, landlords fall all over themselves to lan…
The article did mention if a failed node is detected, a next-day restore 'disk' is delivered to the store, so obviously that is faster/more reliable than random ISP.
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They've been doing this for several years at least (employees taking orders of people in line). I think since before the iPad was released.
For sure. Meant it more as a response to contents of the article that they've managed to break down their business processes into a subset of (dare I say) microservices that have allowed them to pinpoint weaknesses in efficiency and improve upon them - ie. the waffle fries example mentioned.
Can anyone explain what the actual problem is they're solving using 'edge computing'? I get the feeling this is a completely unnecessary use of technology.
They said in the article without getting super-specific that they have low-latency / high-throughput / time sensitive data processing needs in each restaurant. It sounds like they have a whole bunch of sensors tracking their inventory and food preparation pipeline. Other comments here link to other blog posts by them with more details about french fry done-ness deep learning models, for example (wacky but cool). If y…
There just isn't that much data there unless they're attempting to do real-time control of equipment (in which case, just use a regular control system).
I can imagine a requirement for logging potentially, but thats not a low-latency requirement and the use-case for edge-computing is exactly that, low-latency.
Still not seeing anything here but a dramatic overuse of technology I'm afraid.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Spoiler: It's a stack of Intel NUCs. Funny how the world has changed. I got my first taste of real computing from a guy in the next town who would buy dead PDP's from local McDonald's restaurants, fix them up, and sell them on. He always said the hardest part wasn't replacing broken parts, it was that invariably the machines would always have soda spilled in them, no matter where they were stored. Cleaning the inside…
I'd like to hear the story of why a McDonalds would need a PDP. Weren't they...expensive? They would be at the heart of university's IT department, or running a steel mill. Stuff like that. But until PCs came out, at a restaurant I can only picture registers and a dumb terminal hooked up to a distant mainframe.
It wasn't like having an account to crunch all the numbers on staff full time was cheap. Especially when you'd have to have 3-4 accountants just to have 24 hour service, regardless of the work load
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Our hypothesis: By making smarter kitchen equipment we can collect more data. By applying data to our restaurant, we can build more intelligent systems. By building more intelligent systems, we can better scale our business.
Yeah, I wish the article had more detail on the data and how they want to use it instead of the same overview of containerization you could find a thousand other places.
https://zwischenzugs.com/2016/04/12/hitler-uses-docker-annot...
One thing I question is what kind of WAN link a single chicken fast food restaurant can get, or is economical. A lot are in places where the only last mile ISP options will be adsl2+ over copper or docsis cablemodem. I don't see it being a good use of money to spend $600/mo to pay some local ISP for a dedicated 100Mbps line on a 5 year contract. But then again it's highly likely that what they do is not bandwidth int…
Chick-fil-A also has a mobile app that allows you to order your food and pick it up either at the counter or in the drive through, so they need the internet connection for that.
You could easily do that on dial-up.