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Edge Computing at Chick-fil-A

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Re: Edge Computing at Chick-fil-A

#221

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

thomasdelteil wrote: post #49

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

This seems like such an over-engineered solution.

It would've been much simpler to have a plate with multiple pressure sensors and a multi-color LED per spot. When you set the fries down on the sensor it activates and the LED turns green. After X amount of time the LED can turn yellow, meaning that it's becoming stale. Finally, after X+N time has passed and it's no longer fresh it can turn red. Removing the fries turns it off. Aside from being way cheaper, I'd conjecture that this would be much more reliable. I'm pretty sure I could get a prototype of this up and running over the course of a weekend or two.

If you wanted to get really fancy I guess you could also track the room temperature and moisture levels and use that to get a better guess of how long a group of fries will remain fresh. Although I don't know if environmental factors like these have enough impact on fry freshness to be worth taking into consideration.

Anyway, it looks like they were just doing this for fun and learning, so I guess it doesn't really matter.

Re: Edge Computing at Chick-fil-A

#223

Post by samlewis »

TickleSteve wrote: post #211
coffeesn0b wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our tolerance requirements for synchronicity are broad enough that we can tolerate blips like this... at the end of the day we are automating away some simple human interactions (ie; fry the fries or track the food), we aren’t performing surgery with these systems. So far we’ve been satisfied with Linux (Ubuntu 18.04 to be exact) and it’s overall capabilities. Also, don’t forget that cost at scale is a big factor...…

The point about real-time systems is not the your tolerance of 'blips' its about analysis of your worst-case timing requirements. This is what real-time control systems are all about. Sure, you may be able to tolerate a 1 second 'blip'... how about ten seconds? a minute? do you know for sure how long Linux may put your process on hold for? Linux provides no guarantees at all. It seems to me that what you are really c…

Seems like a very appropriate use of technology to me?

If they can get "good enough" results using Linux and running with technologies that the average developer is more likely to know, is it worth the investment in running a RTOS? Especially given running a RTOS will make any higher level app integration more difficult?

The benefit of running with Linux outweighs the risk of "lettuce on the floor", imo. Yes, there's probably overhead in terms of clock cycles, but there's also probably dramatically less overhead in terms of developer resources.. and when you're running off commodity hardware you can guess which overhead will cost more!

Re: Edge Computing at Chick-fil-A

#224

Post by imh »

TickleSteve wrote: post #195
imh wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In a recent post, we shared about how we do bare metal clustering for Kubernetes on-the-fly at the Edge in our restaurants. One of the most common (and best) questions we got was “but why?”. In the post we will answer that question. [emphasis mine] Luckily there's a whole article on that topic. I try to avoid "Did you read the article?" comments, but the first three sentences in the article tell you that this is the…

No, there is some hand-waving about "kitchen equipment" and "low latency". No business case for avoiding more traditional architecture.

This is the relevant pair of paragraphs from the article:

>As a simple example, image a forecasting model that attempts to predict how many Waffle Fries (or replace with your favorite Chick-fil-A product) should be cooked over every minute of the day. The forecast is created by an analytics process running in the cloud that uses transaction-level sales data from many restaurants. This forecast can most certainly be produced with a little work. Unfortunately, it is not accurate enough to actually drive food production. Sales in Chick-fil-A restaurants are prone to many traffic spikes and are significantly affected by local events (traffic, sports, weather, etc.).

>However, if we were to collect data from our point-of-sale system’s keystrokes in real-time to understand current demand, add data from the fryers about work in progress inventory, and then micro-adjust the initial forecast in-restaurant, we would be able to get a much more accurate picture of what we should cook at any given moment. This data can then be used to give a much more intelligent display to a restaurant team member that is responsible for cooking fries (for example), or perhaps to drive cooking automation in the future.

Re: Edge Computing at Chick-fil-A

#225

Post by gammatrigono »

swaggyBoatswain wrote: post #209
gammatrigono wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html Somehow I missed the couple paragraphs mentioning kitchen equipment, and only saw the "Why does a restaurant company like Chick-fil-A want to deploy Kubernetes at the Edge?" bits. Those don't really give me any idea of what they're doing with the servers. Thank you for the rude comment that doesn't even answer my question, though.

They didnt really cover it in the article, maybe in the video but I didnt watch it. I've never worked for chickfila, but I've designed a number of restaurants kitchens before. Chickfila has a large demand for using data driven solutions. Here are some common issues restaurants face: 1. How much food needs to be ordered? Excess food ends up being tossed out, sometimes it gets lost somewhere in the back of the walkin.…

Got it, thanks swaggyBoatswain.

Re: Edge Computing at Chick-fil-A

#226

Post by weberc2 »

starshadowx2 wrote: post #150
factsaresacred wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the point. I'm not concerned about the word. I'm concerned about the definition - those quickest to cry bigot are often guilty of acting like one themselves. Case-in-point: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey being forced to apologise for eating at Chick-fil-A during LGBT Month. What kind of bizarre intolerant nonsense is that? Another case-in-point: Boston and Chicago mayors claim "Chick-fil-A values are not [our…

The paradox of intolerance[1]: being tolerant of those who are intolerant leads to less tolerance. It is completely right to call out intolerant views and actions and work towards eliminating them. [1] https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Paradox_of_tolerance

The obvious problems with 'the paradox of intolerance' being that anyone who can convince themselves of another's intolerance now has moral license to behave intolerantly to an unspecified degree. Of course, exactly this sort of thing happens all the time; notably, it was used to rationalize Google's firing of James Damore--Damore's memo allegedly contained "dogwhistles" so he deserved being fired, slandered by the media, and mobbed on social media.

Re: Edge Computing at Chick-fil-A

#227

Post by walrus01 »

swaggyBoatswain wrote: post #217
abraham_lincoln wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't mean the local cable company will put in $100k of poles and coax to your restaurant. Also, McDonald's corporate owns all their real estate, franchisees, too.

Im not 100% sure its all of them (malls and airports come to mind) but yes its a vast majority. True I didn't consider the cable investment either. Normally the landlord pays for this but I imagine chickfila probably pays for part of the bill. That I dont know though

For an ISP, if it requires a costly outside plant build to reach a premises for a business circuit, it will usually be rolled into some combination of an upfront connection fee (NRC) and monthly rate (MRC) to recoup the costs and have some positive ROI over a 3 to 5 year term. If it's something like a multi tenant office building they may gamble and take a calculated risk to lose money on the first customer over 5 years (example: $800 NRC and $500 MRC that comes nowhere near xoveinft the cost of the build), with a new expensive fiber build, and hope the sales team can sign up more tenants ASAP.

Re: Edge Computing at Chick-fil-A

#228

Post by wl »

api wrote: post #199
monocasa wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but it's not enough. Even the brand name cards aren't worth shit; you need to buy "industrial" cards. Source: tried to get a root filesystem to work on name brand SD cards for a high availability product.

Have you tried things like jffs2? Do they help?

jffs2 runs on raw flash. SD cards have an abstraction layer in front of the flash to make it look like a normal block device and jffs2 isn't usable.

Re: Edge Computing at Chick-fil-A

#229

Post by _wp3r »

coffeesn0b wrote: post #167
laurentl wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand when reading the article I kept thinking of the poor sod who has to cook a new batch of waffle fries because “The Edge” told him to.

Ultimately “the edge” will just do it for him :-P

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pboejsWb484

These got installed, but adoption was low due to cost, they were tied into the POS.

Re: Edge Computing at Chick-fil-A

#230

Post by cosmie »

atwebb wrote: post #31
RandallBrown wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for Nordstrom for several years and whenever I describe their technology department to another developer they're always pretty shocked. It was pretty shocking to me when I started there too.

Ha, y'all were an AWS/clickstream example at the Nashville Analytics Summit yesterday, granted it wasn't a new deck so maybe you've heard that before.

Which session was that? The Kinesis/Lambda one?
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