PostID – Postal Process Automation Toolkit

PostID is Pinesoft’s Postal process automation toolkit. It is a no code development environment for the automation of processes in the carrier and logistic space. It can automate manual processes at workstations or control conveyors for fully automated solutions. It embeds interfaces to a vast array of hardware and technologies. It features a very powerful UI generator, which allows clean professional user interfaces to be created without writing any code at all.

PostID Automation Interfaces

PostID contains Interfaces to the following technologies

Generic Process Automation Interfaces

  • Weighing Scales
  • Barcode Scanners
  • 2D Barcode scanners – which we also toggle into handheld cameras to capture images for further processing
  • OCR engines – often used to process an image of an address block captured using a 2D scanner
  • Webcameras
  • Dimensioners, including the very fast and affordable Tricolops dimensioner
  • Databases
  • Data Files
  • Webservices
  • Printers
  • Reports for formatted output, including barcode generation
  • Image processing
  • Text Handling
  • And many more

Postal Process Automation Specific Interfaces

PostId Configuration Editor

NoCode drag and drop development. These pre written interfaces are connected together by dragging and dropping inputs to outputs.

A Customer’s bespoke postal process automation configuration is shown below. It offers a customer configurable choice of a Tricolops, Cubelogic or QubeVu dimensioner to measure a parcel as part of a larger solution. Input features are connected to output features by drag and drop. Type compatibility is enforced, events trigger the movement of data and a productivity solution is born.

The Dimensioner subprocessor shown below has a published input ‘Get dimensions’. Processing then takes place as follows:

  • Get dimensions triggers the Nexus. The Nexus is configured by the Integer ‘DimensionerChoice’, which reads it’s value from a configuration file, to output via one of three possible output paths.
    • 1 outputs to a Cubelogic dimensioner
    • 2 outputs to a QubeVu dimensioner
    • 3 outputs to a Tricolops dimensioner
  • The dimensioner that is being called to measure the parcel (The Tricolops Dimensioner in this example) measures the parcels and then raises it’s Dimensions event.
  • The dimensions data is passed to a Dimensions processor, which then raises three events, X, Y and Z to represent the physical dimensions measured.
  • Those X, Y and Z values are passed to three Unit Converters, which convert them to integer values in mm.
  • Those three values are then published as output values from this subprocessor.

postal process automation using postid nocode development platform

PostId NoCode User Interface Editor

The image below shows the PostId NoCode User Interface editor (inside the thin red border) on top of a user interface that it has created and is editing.

In it, the selected item, an area called ‘InputFields’ is automatically highlighted (The Blue border) by the editor on the running UI. That UserInterface is designed to be run on a touch screen.

PostID Postal Process Automation Toolkit NoCode User Interface Designer

Sample NoCode UI workflow

All processing is triggered by scanning a barcode from a parcel placed under a dimensioner fitted over a set of scales.

  • The scan will fill the value into the Consignment number
  • X, Y and Z dimensions are automatically captured and the Weight is read.
  • A webcam image is captured showing the parcel and the scales readout for revenue protection purposes.
  • Dependant on the state of the ‘Auto Add’ toggle button the data is automatically submitted to the carrier. Alternatively a touch of the + button will submit it.
  • If the parcel has to be booked onto another service the operator is notified and a new label is automatically generated.

Postal Process Automation – Revenue protection

That running revenue protection postal process automation solution looks like this.

postal process automation solution in operation

With one single scan of a barcode from a package on a set of scales the operator has obtained full revenue protection information for this ‘ugly’ package. He has aquired:

  • Dimensions – also validated on the image in this case taken from the dimensioner
  • Weight – from the scales under the base board
  • Image – which also includes a baseboard ruler if the package is too large to be automatically measured by the Tricolops dimensioner

All of this information is stored remotely in case of queries.

Postal Process Automation using Conveyors

The version of this software depicted above is entirely manual. Another version of it performs the same revenue protection tasks on  fully automated conveyor that proceses thousands of units per hour. Many of the components are identical between the two solutions.

NoCode technology

PostId is a bespoke automation toolkit, primarily designed for the postal process automation market, but applicable to other areas. It can very rapidly generate stable solutions that are extremely fast in operation. It is written in Pharo Smalltalk, and is the Intellectual property of Pinesoft Ltd.