Moleculer Microservices for Badge Printing & Event Operations
An events / badge-management platform
Overview
A Moleculer-based microservices layer powering the operational side of an events / badge-management platform, handling badge data, on-site printing, access logging, and an API gateway, with local network device discovery for on-premise event hardware.
The Challenge
Live events run on-site hardware (badge printers, scanners) that must be discovered and driven over local networks, while still coordinating with central services. The platform needed a resilient, modular worker tier that bridges cloud APIs and physical event-day devices.
What We Built
A Moleculer service mesh with discrete services: api (Moleculer-Web gateway), badges, print, and access_logs, sharing a Mongo db.mixin. It integrates mDNS/Bonjour (via @homebridge/ciao and bonjour) to discover printers and devices on the local network, protobufjs for efficient message encoding, and moleculer-cron for scheduled tasks. Deployment artifacts include a Dockerfile, Docker Compose, and a Kubernetes manifest; a documented print-service API and test suite accompany the services.
Technologies & Approach
Moleculer for a fault-tolerant, broker-based microservice architecture; MongoDB via moleculer-db for persistence; mDNS service discovery to locate on-site devices without manual configuration; Protobuf for compact messaging; cron for scheduled work. Docker and Kubernetes support both event-day and cloud deployment.
Outcome / Impact
Delivered the operational backbone connecting cloud event data to physical badge-printing and scanning hardware, with auto-discovery that keeps on-site setup low-friction. Demonstrates end-to-end event operations from API gateway to printer.
Capabilities Demonstrated
- Broker-based microservice architecture with Moleculer
- On-premise device integration and badge-printing services
- mDNS/Bonjour service discovery for local hardware
- Multi-target deployment with Docker and Kubernetes