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Hi .. I am looking for some one who can develop a badge/ID making software. They already have similar software out there but I would like to have my own designed. These are the requirements in short:

1) Take a picture using a digital camera
2) Transfer the image into a template where you can enter name, address, ID, etc.
3) Sent it to a printer and have it printed.
4) When sent to printer, have the image saved in hard drive.
5) Be able to retrieve saved info later

All of the above must be done via the software with 2 to 3 clicks. (except #5)

Click 1: take picture
Click 2: type info into template
Click 3: have it print it and saved into hard drive

Hardware requirements:

Digital cam
PC/Laptop
Printer


Can anyone tell me what it takes to develop such software? How many hours? How much would you charge to do it? What language can be sued to develop.

Thank you.

Why does it need to be custom made? As you said, there's many products on the market, why is this one special?

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Common Sense v2.0-Striving to make the world a little bit smarter.

I'll be adding some new features which existing softwares don't have .. hoping to sell the final product .. the only problem is that i don'y know any programming .. just trying to get some lead as to what kind of developer/computer language i need ..

Not to deter you in any way but you are talking about a pretty saturated market. You can even get free programs like GIMP to do what your thinking of (with a bit of messing around).

Adobe and Google now have free programs that do this and allow you to purchase the prints from a number of reputable firms throughout the world.

I think you want to find some sort of niche, but a suggestion isn't coming to be yet. Possibly something to make the home prints a DAMN LOT CHEAPER than they are now, but that's another story.

Maybe a commercial orientated one would better your needs specialising in making portfolios and promotional leaflets, who knows.

Rob

I know the Navy base I'm stationed at has something similar. I don't know if it saves to a HD, though I think it might. It uses proprietary equipment (camera and printer), so if you could design something that could be used off the shelf, it might work. But it would have to be able to print on plastic.

I can't answer your specific ?'s, cuz I'm just barely learning to program myself, but the language/OS doesn't really matter, at least for the design. If the product is to be mass-marketed, you have two choices: a proprietary system, maybe running *nix, or (someone forbid) Windows.

The Windows alternative would be cheaper due to so many MS programmers out there, but having a *nix programmer is IMO better cuz they may have more experience. However, since it's graphical based, you may consider Apple.

One final thought is to get a program (most likely OSS) and build on it to get the features you want. For example, get a simple graphics program that could create a card template and could work w/ the photo. Add a linker to a photo capture program for the camera and one for the printer. Combine them all into a pretty shell and make some money.

So, I know I didn't answer your questions, but I hope I gave you some additional ideas. :-)

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Common Sense v2.0-Striving to make the world a little bit smarter.

Crystal, you said it .. all the product i know of use proprietary equipments .. they are sold for thousands of dollars .. i just want to be able to use a cheap webcamp ($20), a printer ($70) and a laptop/PC ($500 to $5,000) with my own sodtware .. obvioulsy I can do this joib using existing softwares .. adobe, photoshop, etc ... but the goal is cheap, easy, and simple to use .. like I said .. the whole thing has to be done with 3 clicks (steps) .. 1- use the software (not the camera) to click and take the picture, picture is automatically loaded into template 2- enter info such as name into template 3- click the print button to save the template and have it print it .. i would think a good developer can make this in 20 to 60 hours ..

As an idle question, I wonder if this could be done via web design software, rather than a compiled program. For example, a web cam can take a still picture via software. If that picture were placed in a web-form template, you could print out that form.

On the face of it, it seems like it might be easier to accomplish than hacking out a C-style program. If you had a standard place to store the pix, it could be pretty easy. I only see it adding one extra step. If you didn't need server-side includes, you could run it all on a client-side basis.
1)Mouse click to take picture
2)Change a link to the new photo (this could be eliminated w/ the right script)
3)Enter personal information
4)Print

Might be something else to consider. Just a thought.

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Common Sense v2.0-Striving to make the world a little bit smarter.