# Building a kiosk?



## virtualgeorg (Sep 9, 2003)

I have seen some used kiosks that were still several thou so I thought maybe I could bulid one myself? I was planning to get a used touch screen monitor from ebay and hopefully that will plug in to any pc? I would also build a box so I could lock it up and it needs to be placed in the mall. I could make the presentation in Flash or HTML but I guess I need some special kiosk software that will only allow people access to the main presentation and keep them locked out of the rest of the pc so they are not re-booting or deleting everything.

Any suggestions?

thanks
-George


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## Gibble (Oct 10, 2001)

Well, if it's a touch screen, they won't have access to a keyboard...so how are they going to get at the options to reboot, etc...?


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## TechGuy (Feb 12, 1999)

I was hired a few years back to program some mall Kiosks. They used this software: http://rockmedia.com/kiosk software.html


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## virtualgeorg (Sep 9, 2003)

Oh yeah, guess I wouldn't need the keyboard if I had a touch screen.
So I may not even need the kiosk software but it looks like there are a lot of features with the software especially the ability to collect info to a database so I will try it out.

thanks!

-GB


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## Jongscx (Apr 30, 2008)

You'd be quite surprised at how easy it is to bypass a badly built kiosk. 

I was about 11 and my parents were applying for a loan at a bank. So I set about trying to figure out how to entertain myself. There was an application/info kiosk set up, so I started playing around on it. 

Obviously, it didn't support multi-touch, and I was able to crash the touchscreen drivers and the HTML frontend by doing too many inputs (randomly tapping on the screen at different places). after that, I had access to the Windows 98 desktop. Went to Start>programs>accesories> Accessibility > On Screen Keyboard...

I then "hacked" into C Drive and found Solitaire and minsweeper..
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Personal Stories aside, I would suggest a few things:

Use a stripped-down embedded OS. There are some linux builds that can run MySQL and PHP and Dbase stuff. If you must use Windows, run it in a Guest account, with a secured separate Administrator account.

There are a lot of "secured web browser" programs that are essentially versions of Firefox or IE with the Top menu-bar removed or disabled. A lot of them also hide the X, so that the person can't close the browser. 

Depending on your installation, you may want an off-site data repository instead of saving everything in the kiosk. It only takes a few seconds to kick in a door and rip out a hard drive. (okay, maybe minutes if the HDD is screwed in...)


I'm building one too, so when you finish yours, I'd like to hear/see details about it. Thanks


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## Fyzbo (Feb 6, 2002)

many browsers have a kiosk mode, it may be helpful.


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## Squashman (Apr 4, 2003)

Plenty of Linux Based Live CD's that are designed to just be Kiosks.


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