Hi all, I am having a bit free time nowadays so thought of starting of a foss project.
I had this idea of creating a state of art cyber cafe management suite. I have started collecting ideas for this. I don't see much good software out there that can do this efficiently in a production environment. And there is nothing in ubuntu repository.
I'm starting this as a hobby free time project, but i need the community support.
First let me tell some details, before taking your help.
1. I have shortlisted 3 tools. i.e a) Python + QT + MySql. b) kbasic + MySql. c) Gambas (QT) + MySql.
I love python but have no much experience in it, I'm a beginner and zero experience in GUI based apps. So the possibility of choosing that is directly proportional to how well i progress in learning it. The reason for kabasic and gambas in the list is, i have good practical experience in vb6 and vb.net and have done a dozen of projects, from office automation software to image manipulation. But particularly under linux my only experience is in gambas, I have done a student management system (premature) for a local english school using mysql as db. But the problem with gambas is it limits the app to linux, but kbasic is multiplatform. But have no experience of db programing with kbasic. So have to see how it works out. So my last resort would be gambas.
Now to the help part: I want help in deciding features. I know people out there will give me thousands of features, so also need help in prioritizing them. Because I'll be only doing in my free time, so if most critical features are added first it will become usable soon.
Also want idea on how to design the working of app. That is now my plan is to make, a software for the client and a software for the server. There will be a db in the server.
For example, when a user comes the admin logs the user in a particular system with user details. the system logs in and the software starts counting the time and recording the bandwidth usage. And when the user logs out, the software shows the amount based on the tariff. The information will be passed between server and client app by the database(i don't know any other way to be honest), that is both the client and server app keep updating the database.
Feature like provision for prepaid user, ability control user access to certain sites or services etc.. are considered as a luxury at this moment and will be added in next stage, that is after the first working suite is ready!
And again let me tell, i'm doing this as a free time hobby project so progress may be really pathetic. But i'm confident that i'll do this at some point of time.
Thank You.