bof-o-matic

Management system for Birds of a Feather/BoF sessions at a conference

Required Dependencies

• ruby
• ruby-rake
• ruby-bundler
• sqlite3
• imagemagick
• python3 with pip
• brother_ql python library

Local Environment (development, proof-of-concept)

To get up and running:

1. Copy bof-o-matic.yaml.example to bof-o-matic.yaml and do any required config changes.

2. Run bundle install to install all ruby dependencies

3. Run pip install brother_ql_next to install the python library for the printers

4. Download a current copy of Bootstrap into

   • public/assets/css/bootstrap.bundle.min.css
   • public/assets/js/bootstrap.bunfle.min.js

5. Download a current copy of jQuery into

   • public/assets/js/jquery.min.js

6. Set up the DB schema: rake db:migrate

7. Create the initial scheduler user: rake db:add\_sysop\_user

8. Run the app with run-app.sh! The initial login is:

   • username: sysop
   • password: correct horse bof changeme

You'll probably want to run the following as well, which are daemons by default but can be run with -f to foreground them:

• bom-reminderd: Send reminders X minutes before the session starts.
• bom-scheduled: Send "ready for scheduling" notices to admins if sessions aren't self-scheduled in time.
• bom-maild: Send queued emails via SMTP.
• bom-smsd: Send queued text messages via Twilio.

Docker

1. On your docker host, get the product ID for your brother label printer. In the following example, the productID is 2043.

> $ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 2109:3431 VIA Labs, Inc. Hub
Bus 001 Device 006: ID 04f9:2043 Brother Industries, Ltd QL-710W Label Printer 
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub

1. Edit 90-brother-printer.rules and change changeme to the productID for your printer.
2. Copy 90-brother-printer.rules to /etc/udev/rules.d, then run sudo udevadm control --reload-rules. You may also need to power-cycle the printer. This guarantees that the bof-o-matic docker container will have the same device handle to connect to every time.
3. Copy bof-o-matic.yaml.example to bof-o-matic.yaml and do any required config changes.
4. Build the image: docker build . --file=Dockerfile --tag=bof-o-matic:latest
5. Start the containers: docker compose up -d

Note: This container initializes the DB directly inside itself during build; if you rebuild the container, you will lose your DB unless you take steps to preserve it.