Comment by Closi
2 years ago
I doubt the second bit is true - they will still be marking the ticket as used in their backend.
They are just trying to prevent scalpers printing off tickets 10 times and selling them outside the venues as a scam, which happened at every large concert I have ever been to until recently (so I assume this is working!).
You would hope... But they often run the scanners in offline mode (e.g. at temporary / seasonal events) so there can be lag in the backends being updated.
Heard from a friend who got straight into two events in the same city recently - they presumed the show was at one outdoor venue but the scanners let them straight in at the first (wrong) venue. Went to the correct venue and got in there without any issue too (this suggests one or both venues were offline or using offline scanners).
Hm. So I guess at a small venue that has 3 door people with offline scanners, you have a 2/3 chance of success if you're the second of two people sharing a barcode. Combined with the obvious 3/3 success being the first person, that averages out to 5/6 chance if both of you (oblivious to each other) schedule your arrival similarly.
My experience from visiting many many of them is that 80-90% of small venues don’t even bother with scanners.
not really offline but someone who works in industry here once detailed out that each scanner has it's own copy of a SQLite database that is being updated as fast as possible based on inserts of other scanners since any downtime is a big deal at these venues
i.e., theoretically duplicate tickets would be identified but not instantly but still pretty quickly
> they will still be marking the ticket as used in their backend.
I assume that's true, but it makes me wonder how their scanners are connected to the server.
I mean, if 10,000 people showing up to an event with smartphones overwhelms wireless networks, wont that also kick their scanners off the network?
They'd probably like to have a system where, if a scanner loses its connection, it can still validate tickets. It could store a copy of validated tickets locally, and upload it when the network connection is restored - that would mean a copied ticket would have to make sure they go to a different door/scanner. But it would allow copying.
Simplest answer is a private wifi network for the scanners.
It's also the best answer.
It's all off-the-shelf electronics and standard protocols. Venue provides some wifi with a "Ticketbastard" SSID (or whatever) at entry points, and the COTS-built barcode-validating devices use that. Easy-peasy.
They might also provide other wireless networks for other purposes (definitely for vendors [$$$], but perhaps also for regular house staff, touring staff, and maybe even the guests who pay for it all!), but they'll all be under the venue's control and coordination: Other than the odd personal hotspot that wanders in, there's not necessarily any meaningful outside interference on 2.4/5GHz wifi bands in a big venue.
It's pretty easy to make short-range wifi work reliably in that kind of RF environment, such as the chokepoints where tickets are validated. (Modern apartment dwellers will have worse interference problems than that.)
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I have no idea what connectivity options are available in current scanners, but it sounds like a viable solution could be to use an RF band that customers don't overwhelm, similar to wireless microphones perhaps, with a little hub situated nearby that consolidates the list of already-scanned tickets, possibly standalone or possibly on a wired network that includes other far-away entrances.
Was going to say it shouldn't be hard to run a wire around an entire stadium, but maybe some popup outdoor venues that might be complicated. Could use line of sight towers for fun.
900mhz networks like halow or even lorawan should do
Even at huge venues i dont expect requests would be over 5 rps
5 RPS, per scanner, surely?
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