Child check-in systems . . . open source to the rescue?

I've been looking at various child check-in systems for our church and the majority of them have something that is not exactly easy to stomach -- a price tag. As it is, I'm working on getting a donated computer running, getting the label printer up and going, and all the other ancillary things that will need to be dealt with. The typical pricing structure is $xxx for 1-500 people, and then it scales up from there.

I've been working with a lot of interesting technologies over the years, and my main focus for the past 8+ years has been open source systems based on the LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) stack. I've adjusted that slightly to include Postgres as my preferred database, just because I lean more towards Postgres as a stable enterprise level application . . . which I'm sure MySQL fans will be eager to jump in defense of, but it's my call, so I'll deal with it. I recently got very into some MVC (Model/View/Controller) type systems, like Ruby on Rails, but the learning curve for Ruby/Rails didn't quite lend itself to my schedule. I decided to look into MVC on the PHP side of things and decided that CodeIgniter would be a good way to go. I even changed over the infrastructure of the system I'm designing at my day job (Cascade Health Services) to use this way of doing things. To supplement that on the Javascript side of things, I'm using JQuery.

After spending some quality time on the other side of the kids check-in at Heartland Church, my wife and I decided that a computerized system would make a lot more sense. We are in the process of writing this and with the MVC modularity and abundance of code for both CodeIgniter/PHP/JQuery, I think our solution can be a very robust and easy to build system. I can see the need for something like this at churches around the country, but many of those churches don't have the luxury of new(er) Windows capable systems. In using the LAMP stack, I can take any PC and make it into a check-in system with merely a web interface to control the entire operation. I think making this solution available to others as an Open Source project would be fantastic as well, because it will allow others to contribute new ideas.

So that's my take on the subject . . . and day by day we're making progress on the system. I'm using my Linux based Dell laptop (FC9) as the guinea pig for this. I plugged in a Dymo 400 labeler and it amazingly worked right off the bat with my laptop setup. I'm hoping to get a computer ready to roll, with the flavor of Ubuntu as it's OS (operating system). I've already overcame quite a few technical hurdles, so now it's just time standing between the final product and testing. My wife and I are scheduled to check-in again this weekend, so it would be fantastic to put the system in place now . . . but we'll see how my schedule goes.

Interesting juxtaposition

On CNN's front page today:
Tech »

* U.S. air-traffic network outdated, costly
* Stephen Hawking: Our future is in space

When we have a ticking time-bomb in terms of air traffic control networks, I think our immediate future should be on fixing what we already have going. My future is not quite in space per se, but somewhere more heavenly that's for sure.