pcDuino Crowdsource Kiosk

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Contributors: Nick Poole
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When the kiosk had sat for some two weeks in the break room I decided to call an end to the experiment and wheel the machine back to my office to unload the text file and have a look. It turns out that not everyone is cut out for the advertising business... I've collected a few of the more interesting responses here, in AdWords format, for your enjoyment:

First up, we have an impatient volunteer who seems to be fixated on the chocolate reward, rendering him/her incapable of actually finishing the ad:


> Raspberry Pi - Model B > Raspberry Pi is da bomb > GIMME CANDY > I can has candy? > www.sparkfun.com/fakead

The next ad starts off fairly well-, if strangely-, written. It takes an interesting turn around line 3, however, when its Wonder Twin powers activate: shape of a poorly translated Chinese advertisement:


pcDuino

pcDuino runs Linux!

It's got brains AND beauty!

Linux for your pleasant life!

www.sparkfun.com/fakead

Here we have another ad that took off in the right direction and then went south, as it were:


pcDuino

Linux and Android Capable Single board computer

groin grabbingly good

www.sparkfun.com/fakead

This next ad is especially strange because the author seems to take this as an opportunity to poke fun at me. The puzzling part? This never happened, I have literally no idea where this story (of dubious possibility) even came from:


> RedBoard - Programmed with Arduino > Nick P is a chucklehead! > He locked himself in his own car. > It was pretty funny. > www.sparkfun.com/fakead

I have to admit, I kind of like where this one went. Of all of the entries that I collected from the machine, this would be the one I'm most likely to run. There's something methodically comforting about the progression from one to two and eventually three exclamation points in the final line. That said, you're not likely to run into this ad in the wild:


> SparkFun Inventors Kit for Arduino with Retail Case > Program your evil empire now > BUILD! PROGRAM!! CONTROL!!! > www.sparkfun.com/fakead

Finally, our very own Chris Taylor (or should I call him Bobby Tables?) decided to toss some SQL at my input form. Luckily, my program was literally too low tech to even care. There was no SQL database to play with, just an innocent txt file soaking up whatever bits came in from the form:


> pcDuino > SELECT * FROM "name" > SELECT * FROM "" > SELECT * FROM "date" > SELECT * FROM *


So... it turns out that you can get people to technically do work for candy. Unfortunately there's really no way to control the quality of the feedback that you'll get. So what happens to the kiosk now? Will it sit in my office collecting dust? Of course it won't! Maybe I'll figure out a way for it to dispense other treats and send it back out into the breakroom to collect dirty jokes. Or maybe I'll turn it into a green information kiosk to display sustainability data. Whatever happens, I've learned a few things this time around that should help me keep it operational. And hopefully you've learned a few things that will help you exploit your friends' love of candy.