Avanti Ticket Machines (TVM) - not fit for purpose?

[MKB]

I realise I'm probably behind the curve on this as my tickets are nearly always eTickets or collected from London Midland machines, but today was the first time I've collected from the new Avanti TVMs. I know I shouldn't be surprised, this being Avanti, but they were next to useless.

This was at Stafford, where Avanti have ripped out and replaced the fully functional and fast Virgin TVMs.

I tried the smaller machine first to collect my one booking which would require 13 coupons to be printed. After accepting my credit card, I couldn't get any of the characters on the keyboard to register. I also couldn't see any option on the user interface to cancel the interaction.

Moving to the second TVM, each character took at least six and up to a dozen presses before it would register. Keying in the eight-character collection reference took over a minute.

It then took nearly two minutes to print the 13 coupons. These printers are even slower than LM's. Virgin's were always very fast and usually had dual printers to make them quicker still.

I wonder whether my rubber-soled trainers thwart the touch-screen's ability to detect touches. If so, that would be really old-school technology.

What a waste of money, energy and natural resources! Good quality kit has been junked in favour of something completely inferior.

 

[Skie]

They’re pretty awful. But all uk ones seem to suffer from cheap touch screens which makes them bloody painful to use. Plus slow printers.

Someone needs to figure out which model the Indian railways use, this video shows how fast a responsive touchscreen setup can be used when you know how:

 

[Mcr Warrior]

I realise I'm probably behind the curve on this, as my tickets are nearly always eTickets or collected from London.Midland machines, but today was the first time I've collected from the new Avanti TVMs. I know I shouldn't be surprised, this being Avanti, but they were next to useless.

We've had a few threads this year discussing the various shortcomings of Avanti TVMs.

Your analysis is fairly typical!

 

[Bletchleyite]

They’re pretty awful. But all uk ones seem to suffer from cheap touch screens which makes them bloody painful to use. Plus slow printers.

Someone needs to figure out which model the Indian railways use, this video shows how fast a responsive touchscreen setup can be used when you know how:

I can easily use a Scheidt & Bachmann that fast.

 

[kkong]

I can easily use a Scheidt & Bachmann that fast.

Then wait an age while it prints out the tickets.

The ScotRail ones tell you to collect your tickets and receipt, then start printing the receipt...

 

[duncanp]

I realise I'm probably behind the curve on this, as my tickets are nearly always eTickets or collected from London.Midland machines, but today was the first time I've collected from the new Avanti TVMs. I know I shouldn't be surprised, this being Avanti, but they were next to useless.

This was at Stafford, where Avanti have ripped out and replaced the fully functional and fast Virgin TVMs.

I tried the smaller machine first to collect my one booking which would require 13 coupons to be printed. After accepting my credit card, I couldn't get any of the characters on the keyboard to register. I also couldn't see any option on the user interface to cancel the interaction.

Moving to the second TVM, each character took at least six and up to a dozen presses before it would register. Keying in the eight-character collection reference took over a minute.

It then took nearly two minutes to print the 13 coupons. These printers are even slower than LM's. Virgin's were always very fast and usually had dual printers to make them quicker still.

I wonder whether my rubber-soled trainers thwart the touch-screen's ability to detect touches. If so, that would be really old-school technology.

What a waste of money, energy and natural resources! Good quality kit has been junked in favour of something completely inferior.

This is exactly what happened to me a few weeks ago at Birmingham New Street.

All I wanted was to buy was a day return to Church Stretton, and I had the same problem as you did with unresponsive touch screens.

Then the machine decided I wanted to go to Church & Oswaldtwistle instead of Church Stretton, and when I tried to press the "Go back" button to correct this it wouldn't work.

Like you I moved on to a second TVM and had the same problem.

So I moved to a third TVM and finally got it to work, but not before having to jab the unresponsive touch screen several times to get it to work.

Maybe Avanti are installing <insert word which is an anagram of the French word for 'Park'> equipment and closing ticket offices in order to get people to use e-tickets, much like the banks are closing branches and reducing the hours of those that remain open.

 

[Birmingham]

I agree the new TVMs are very poor and I've seen very long queues for the ticket office at Birmingham New Street since they were introduced (there are also fewer TVMs than previously, and queues for those too).

 

[Glasgowbusguy]

The issue might not actually be the touch the screens that are poor quality it could be the amount of RAM that is installed as that will influence the performance of any computer more than cheap parts will.
If the machine is low on RAM you will see slow response to input , processes hanging or freezing , wierd errors , misinterpreted inputs , slow printing as it takes to long to send data to the printer.

Skimping on RAM is a huge money saver as your looking at £40 for 32gb or ram for basic slow speed ram however the TVMs probably require at least 64gb of ram.

 

[kkong]

the TVMs probably require at least 64gb of ram.

I find that very hard to believe.
They are running one very low demand application, they are not high end workstations rendering 3D graphics or trying to break complex encryption.
More likely: the TVM application software quality is garbage and the touch screens are not properly calibrated.

 

[Elecman]

I find kneeling down and using the screen works reasonably well but like others the speed of printing is abysmal

 

[Benjwri]

The issue might not actually be the touch the screens that are poor quality it could be the amount of RAM that is installed as that will influence the performance of any computer more than cheap parts will.
If the machine is low on RAM you will see slow response to input , processes hanging or freezing , wierd errors , misinterpreted inputs , slow printing as it takes to long to send data to the printer.

Almost all the TVMs I've come across that are unresponsive are only so in certain areas. RAM is very unlikely to mean the computer is fine with the letter 'p' but not the letter 's'.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I find that very hard to believe.
They are running one very low demand application, they are not high end workstations rendering 3D graphics or trying to break complex encryption.
More likely: the TVM application software quality is garbage and the touch screens are not properly calibrated.

TVMs need hardly any RAM. 8GB would be absolutely loads.

They are just poorly designed junk done on the cheap.

 

[setdown]

Yeah they're pretty shocking. I tried buying a ticket from Piccadilly to Alderly Edge on one of them in the evening peak. It would only sell me an off-peak ticket, which I was pretty sure not valid at the time. It took me to payment, and then unsurprisingly enough it just displayed 400 BAD REQUEST, I imagine because the ticket validation failed (because I HAD to pick a journey and it was at peak time). Of course it just crashed to the home screen after that.

 

[jh64]

If the software is web-based/uses something like Electron (essentially a Google Chrome window), it absolutely would eat a ton of memory.

 

[Bletchleyite]

If the software is web-based/uses something like Electron (essentially a Google Chrome window), it absolutely would eat a ton of memory.

It really wouldn't.

64 GB RAM is power user territory, e.g. movie editing. Not web browsing. 8GB would be more than plenty.

 

[Skie]

I’m a little surprised nobody has tried a voice controlled one. Done well, it would be a very easy way to select even complicated ticket types and cater for different levels of user knowledge. Much like how Alexa can be given one complete command by an experienced user (remind me at 1pm tomorrow about the shuttle launch) or it can prompt for each (set a reminder, shuttle launch, tomorrow, 1pm)

Itd be entirely possible to walk up and say “return to London Euston leaving now” and have it parse that and display journey options from that machines station that match those parameters. Tricky to get the mics working in a noisy station but given you know where a user will be standing it’s not impossible with beam forming.

 

[jayah]

I’m a little surprised nobody has tried a voice controlled one.

No, no, no! The ones used by call centres are the worst things imaginable.

I. Am. Sorry. I Didn't. Quite. Catch. That. Please. Try. Again.

You wouldn't be getting Alexa and I wouldn't have such a device in the house anyway.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I’m a little surprised nobody has tried a voice controlled one. Done well, it would be a very easy way to select even complicated ticket types and cater for different levels of user knowledge. Much like how Alexa can be given one complete command by an experienced user (remind me at 1pm tomorrow about the shuttle launch) or it can prompt for each (set a reminder, shuttle launch, tomorrow, 1pm)

Itd be entirely possible to walk up and say “return to London Euston leaving now” and have it parse that and display journey options from that machines station that match those parameters. Tricky to get the mics working in a noisy station but given you know where a user will be standing it’s not impossible with beam forming.

I think noise would be too much of an issue.

 

[anamyd]

A computer system (including one of these ticket machines) is in fact a system, so the CPU, RAM and HDD(/SSD etc) have to be good enough for each other or the weakest component will be a bottleneck (make the whole thing slow).