Hi-

I might be able to shed some light on the process as I too am in process
for this.  *SIGH*

As I understand it from the PP documentation (I really suggest hitting their
site and getting the documentation, although there is quite a bit of it),
the PP system DOES NOT supply shipping costs, only includes it as a line
item for the bill. Drat.

In the US (where I am), the US postal service (USPS) has a service where
you can send an XML transaction to one of their servers (if you are a
registered (but free) signed up and qualified site) to determine the
postage of a number of different postage services (bulk, letter, package,
express, etc.) both domestically (with to/from zip codes) and internationally
(via destination country codes), along with package size and weight and
it will return the postage rates for them. If you want to persue this
path, go to the USPS web page and there will be information on the site
related to this information.  You have to register, then you get info
on their "test" site while you build and test your scripts (this is where
I am) and then after scripts are "checked" you are given the "live"
machines names.

I am using PHP as the server side scripting language for this effort.


I also have a couple of friends who have gotten "shopping cart" packages
(I believe that they are both free) who concurrently both swear by and
at them at the same time.......  One is Zen-cart the other is CRE loaded.

Neither of them were what I wanted, however, CREloaded had both the USPS
calculation package (along with UPS and Fed Ex.) as well as the PP
interface.  Both packages are quite extensive (way too extensive for my
needs).  Also, from my friends, both have their own set of "quirks" (bugs)
that make the debugging of them quite interesting.  I believe that ZEN
cart is on sourceforge.net.  And for CRE loaded you can go to:

http://www.creloaded.com

Where you "buy" a copy for 0.00 dollars......

Zen Cart is at:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/zencart/

I didn't like the the interfaces for these guys and I prefer using POSTGRES
database rather than mysql, as in cre-loaded.  I did a "pilot" install of
cre-loaded (both require PHP, and creloaded requires https services), and
kinda got it working.

And THAT finally reminded me why they didn't work for me.  I don't want 
backorders. I want the package to check on existing stock and inhibit the
transaction if the entry exceeds "safety" stock.  There are times in my
package where there might be "large" orders of maybe 10 to 20 boards.
If, for example, I had 15 on hand with a safety range of 5 boards and the
customer wanted to buy 11 boards, there would be two orders with both the
packages that I looked at (and the PP shopping cart too if I remember).
You would get the order of 10 with a back order of 1 with twice the 
shipping and handling.  The only entity that benefits from that is the
shipping company.  So, THAT's why I'm rolling my own.

Please be adviced that mine is still a work in progress.  I just got my
XML test scripts working with the USPS a couple of weeks ago (a paying
job came up in between) and I'm just about ready to get back to it again.

It's a fits and starts operation, so no timeline can be expected.  Sorry,
but I hope that my little message adds some light on the subject.

  Cheers,

   Rich S.


> 
> > The only
> > thing I would like is a cable to go from the programming header to my
> > breadboard. This is probably quite user-specific so I guess I can't
> > blame Olin for not including one.
> 
> That and the PayPal shopping cart system I'm using makes it impossible to
> add small options to a order.  I'm looking at alternatives, but PayPal is
> the only one that doesn't charge a substantial monthly fee and that you
> don't need to be a web guru to set up.  I would like a system where you can
> buy various little items where I can supply the shipping weight for each
> item, then the system totals up the shipping weight and decides what to
> charge for shipping.  Or at least a global per-order shipping charge with
> incremental per piece charges.  With PayPal, you have to specify a separate
> shipping charge per item.  You can distinguish between the first and
> additional quantity, but it is still per item.
> 
> This makes is unreasonable to sell little items like cables.  I can charge
> $5 for the cable, but there is no way to explain to the system not to charge
> additional shipping if you're alreay buying a USBProg, for example.
> 
> I'd like to offer a variety of accessories, but until I find a reasonable
> shopping cart system this is unworkable.
> 
> > The USB driver worked just fine. I installed the software and it said it
> > installed a driver, and that I should reboot. Me being me, I decided to
> > see if it would work without rebooting (silly Windows).. it worked fine.
> > YMMV.
> 
> The reboot is for the rest of the Embed Inc software, not the Windows
> driver.  The software installation sets some environment variables in the
> registry.  Things will work in any command window you create after the
> install, but command windows opened before the install do not automatically
> inherit the new environment variables, and the software will not work right
> in those.  Unfortunately some commands will work and other will just appear
> to sortof work.  It's easier to tell people to reboot than to try to explain
> or deal with all the issues.  For example, if you ran PIC_PROG in a shell
> window that was created before the install it would probably mostly work,
> but error messages would look like a mess because it might not be able to
> find the message files.
> 
> > The circuit board was hand-soldered. I have visions of someone,
> > somewhere, with strained eyes and wrists.
> 
> The board was machine loaded, but apparently they screwed up something with
> the SOT-23 transistors and some of them had to be reflowed by hand.  We had
> to do a little work on some of the units as part of the final test
> procedure.  I just looked it up the logs and you have unit #103, which had a
> bad solder joint on Q12 fixed during final test.
> 
> 
> ********************************************************************
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> (978) 742-9014.  Gold level PIC consultants since 2000.
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