15 Minutes or Less: Build a Ready-to-Use Customer Review System for Your Retail Business Using Raspberry Pi

Today, customer reviews are very important to business success. There are many online services available to collect customer reviews for online stores. However, there is no good way to collect customer reviews for small retail businesses.

We are excited to show you how to easily build a ready to use system that collects customer reviews on-site for your retail business using a Raspberry Pi. You can use any web-browser to see the reviews collected by the system. We provide the source code as well as a compiled binary so that you can get started right away.

We named this system StarTrack (derived from Star Trek and tracking review stars).

We spent a lot of time thinking about ways in which we can simplify the design so that anyone can easily build and benefit from this Instructable.

The source code, CAD designs, and other files can be found on our GitHub repository.

1. Raspberry Pi

• MicroSD card for the Raspberry Pi
• MicroUSB or USB Type C cable for the Raspberry Pi

2. Hookup wires

3. 5 Push-Button Switches (Here are the ones we used)

4. A computer for setting up the Raspberry Pi and viewing customer reviews from StarTrack

5. Optional: Access to a 3D printer for creating a faceplate and button caps for StarTrack

To flash Raspberry Pi OS onto the Raspberry Pi, use the Raspberry Pi Imager App.

1. Click on the "Choose OS" button and click on Raspberry Pi OS.

2. Click on the "Choose Storage" button and click on your SD card.

3. If you want to connect to the Raspberry Pi via SSH, click the settings icon and enable SSH.

4. Configure the WiFi settings in the same settings menu.

5. Click "Write" after configuring the Raspberry Pi settings.

For additional instructions, please visit this link.

Connect the push buttons to the Raspberry Pi GPIO pins with hookup wires. Wire the system according to this schematic above.

You can choose to solder the components onto a PCB, like we did, or use a breadboard for wiring the components.

IMPORTANT: THE PUSH BUTTONS SHOULD BE CONNECTED BETWEEN THE COMMON 3V3 PIN AND GPIO PIN NUMBERS ABOVE 8.

You can use a multimeter to test that the switches are working as expected. If you need help using a multimeter, click this link.

1. Download the latest StarTrack release for your Raspberry Pi from our GitHub Releases Page.

2. Open Terminal and use the "cd" command followed by the directory path to navigate to the directory that the tar file is located in. Example: "cd /Users/akhil/Downloads"

3. In the same Terminal window, extract the files from the TAR file using "tar -xzf (file.tar.gz)". If you need help extracting files from a TAR file, click this link.

NOTE: Replace the content between the () with the actual value and do not include the ().

4. In the same Terminal window, edit the config file for the frontend build folder with "nano build/config.js". Add your Raspberry Pi's IP address. If you need help finding your Raspberry Pi's IP address, click this link. Exit nano by typing CTRL+X on your computer and then followed by typing "y".

5. Run this command if you have the same GPIO configuration as the schematic above: "./Star-Track"

- If your wiring is different or you want to customize the server options, run this command for a list of flags that you can customize: "./Star-Track -h"

Congratulations on setting up StarTrack!

Open a browser application on your computer and go to: http://(IP ADDRESS OF YOUR RASPBERRY PI):(HTTP PORT OF STAR TRACK SERVER)/

NOTE: Replace the content between the () with the actual value and do not include the ()

This website is the dashboard for viewing customer ratings. By default, StarTrack shows you how many ratings you have received to date. StarTrack also allows customizing the range of dates you want to view ratings for. StarTrack will show you the rating totals for that time frame.

In the future, we want to add support to collect reviews through different methods such as audio recordings. We also want to add support for plugins that enable a business owner to post the ratings to Yelp and other online customer review services.

Thank you for your time. We wish your business the very best to thrive with insightful metrics from StarTrack.

Please feel to contact us with questions or thoughts about this project.

This project was co-created along with Alexander Ott (frontend software in React) and my younger brother Akshay Datla (CAD and 3D printing). I developed the hardware as well as the server-side software using Go language.