Kick butt kiosks – Part II

Our “go-live” date for Fellowship One (F1) looms ever closer & with the kids department planning on doing their check-in training within the next week the pressure was on to get all our check-in kiosks up’n’going.

What are they for?

In the initial stage of our F1 implementation the kiosks will be used to check-in kids to Crossway’s various programs (KidSpace, Moppets, Mainly Music etc). If you’re a Crossway parent you will have already heard that this is coming and the KidSpace team will be contacting you with more details closer to F1-day. Basically when you arrive for a service or program a friendly KidSpace volunteer will be standing behind one of the check-in kiosk and will ask you for the last four-digits of your home phone number (for database lookup). Your kids will then be checked in to their correct activity room, name tags and a collection receipt (with a super-secure single use 3-character alpha-numeric code) will be printed. This not only simplifies and enhances our security procedures but also provides better stats for the KidSpace pastor.

Down the track a couple of them will be placed in our main foyer to access other F1 features (such as finding a LifeGroup or volunteering). In that configuration a keyboard will replace the barcode scanner and printer.

Back to the kiosks

So here’s our hardware:

• Bog-standard PC (in our case Lenovo A57 small form factor)
• Touch screen (LG L1510BF)
• Wireless network adaptor (Linksys WUSB600N 802.11N dual-band USB adaptor)
• Barcode scanner (Metrologic Orbit Omni)
• Printer (Zebra LP2844-Z)
• (Optional) Keyboard (Lenovo UltraNav USB)

All of that is housed in a custom unit built by a cabinet maker who has done a lot of other work around the Crossway Centre. The units have a large ventilated storage are for the PC and consumables with an aluminium roll-top for the screen (which folds flat), printer, scanner and optional keyboard.

The software:

We’re running Windows XP SP3 on these puppies, but this ain’t your mumma’s XP. First we stripped out all the stuff that had no place on a kiosk using nLite. Next we bolted it down tighter than a drum using Windows SteadyState. Then we installed the F1 Check-In application. Finally a registry hack and a VB script made it so that the Check-In app ran as the Windows shell (similar to this) with no access to Explorer or Task Manager (or anything else for that matter).

And now some pics…

Waiting for the hardware to be installed

Waiting for some “customers”
(NB: the units have shelves that join them together to make a counter)
Just for fun I think our operators should (sometimes) ask, “Window or aisle?”

Operators view showing the F1 Check-In app in assisted mode

Many thanks to my trusty team member Mike Taylor for all his unpacking, plugging-in and Ghosting etc.

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