Stadium WiFi and Weatherproof Tablet PCs?

StadiumOutfitter asks: "I've been tasked with setting up a wireless network for an open air stadium - not just for internet access but potentially with in seat food/drink orders and even interactive game related content. That's the easy part, really. What I'd really like to find is a rugged and weatherproof handheld device (tablet or PDA style) that can do Wifi. The plan is to rent them out during gamedays for people who want to participate, but can't bring a laptop. Any suggestions?

Comments

Here's one. Looks good but expensive.

[petard]

Just such a beast was mentioned here on slashdot recently. It's a WinCE device with two CF slots, so it's perfectly capable of 802.11x. Read a review here or order one here.

It's quite pricy, but if you think you can rent them out (especially at pro-sporting event level prices!), I suspect you can recover the cost pretty neatly. Can you tell us which stadium it is?

Re:Here's one. Looks good but expensive.

[nuggetman]

http://www.pocketpcdn.com/articles/kiosk.html

If you go w/ a PPC solution, this will let you force any program to run in "Kiosk" mode, meaning none of the Windows Mobile interface (close button, other programs, etc) will be accessible.

Why?

[DAldredge]

Why would anyone want to take a laptop to a sporting event? On first glance this appears to be as smart as shipping 50lbs bags of dog food via UPS.

Re:Why?

[Johnathon_Dough]

Well, by the number of people I see walking to SBC Park in San Francisco with laptop bags. A bunch of them do. From the two times I have been to Games there, the onlyplace you have to worry about having crap spilled onto your pricey equipment is if you are in the bleachers. The rest of the time, I would use the term lethargic to describe the average fan there.

OT: [rant]I have worked less than 3 block from that damn ballpark ever since it opened. And Damnit. I now hate baseball and baseball fans...and all theri damn kids too. I have lost count of the number of times I walk out into our parking lot to see some jackass peeing onto someone else's car. [/rant]

Use a lower cost alternative

[tres]

You're talking about a lot of capital investment just roaming around the park. I imagine your corp will already be putting the responsibility onto the client for return of an operational device.

It seems that the best way to recoup costs is not to buy some ruggedized, high-cost version of something that may or may not be popular. Think about the industry as a whole; you probably can't count on any end-user device being attractive to customers for more than a year. There will always be newer and better to replace the older.

Just bulk buy the regular version of the device for a reduced price and rent a protective jacket as an additional cost.

This a) provides an additional revenue stream (think embroidered team logos and reselling your device for markup), and b) reaffirms to the client the idea that it is, in fact, their responsibility to return the device in good working order. Protective sleeves are easily replaceable by anyone. Rather than paying a tech lots of dollars to repair a ruggedized device, you can replace protective covers with minimal overhead.

Re:Use a lower cost alternative

[Myself]

I agree that the failure rate between rugged and standard hardware won't be different enough to justify the price delta. People will find a way to break the rugged stuff, if only to prove that it can be broken.

A padded neoprene sleeve with a vinyl window, slipped over a device that was designed well in the first place, should be plenty for most applications. If you really want rugged hardware, Google is much faster than Ask Slashdot, and it has a lower percentage of comments saying "you should've googled, idiot!".

Test screens for sunlight viewability. If beeps and boops are required, test speakers for audibility. Test batteries for operation over a wide temperature range, and make sure the manufacturer will replace any batteries that fail or degrade prematurely. Make sure dust and crud won't gum up the buttons or charging contacts.

Good luck getting wireless connectivity with no bits that stick out. Antennae don't last long, and they're hard to weatherproof.

The wireless part has me curious. How does your radio scheme deal with huge numbers of users in a small area? If you're trying to broadcast content to all of them at once, do the protocols support doing it with a single transmission? Does the application software?

Furthermore, for interactive applications where the user devices will be transmitting, does the system deal robustly and fairly with overload situations? Does efficiency plummet as utilization rises?

Given that the antennae integrated into handhelds are scarcely better than dummy loads, what sort of antenna gain do you need on the access point end to provide plenty of SNR? Consider the radio environment of the venue, given that metal surfaces will cause reflections and raise the noise floor. Also consider that reflections might make it difficult to divide the area into zones served by multiple access points, and devices might hop between points sporadically and quickly due to signal fluctuations.

Motorola

[$exyNerdie]

I believe that motorola builds a lot of weatherproof ruggerized devices running Windows CE and other pda style operating systems.... I know this because one of my friend works for a fortune 500 company that sells meat and they needed such devices in pig farms!!

psion netpad fits well

[rekrutacja]

it's small, it's ruggadised, it goes wireless, it's programmable. oh, and yes, it's expensive.

http://www.psionteklogix.com/public.aspx?s=com&p =P roducts&pCat=128&pID=1086

Re:Are the Laptops Water-Proof?

[DAldredge]

Because people do not take as good care of items they rent as items they own.

Handspring Treo 600

[mbstone]

My Handspring Treo 600 is a pretty good device for doing what you suggest, probably any palm-phone will do. Have you thought about doing a marketing tie-in with a cellular service provider? Get the latest [brand] palmphone [at our special price][on a trial for a day at XYZ ballpark] and use it to get 2 free hot dogs and sodas delivered to your seat.

Maybe your ballpark is already named after a cell phone company.....

Panasonic Toughbooks are a fit

[Hollinger]

The Panasonic Toughbook might be interesting to you, but, alas, they are expensive.

http://www.panasonic.com/computer/toughbook/home .a sp

DIY embedded terminals?

[x00101010x]

I've given some thought to something similar. Low cost, mass produced terminals for public schools to help further electronic textbooks.

First off, I must agree with the idea of ruggedized, waterproof tablets. Laptops can easily be worn out in one season of ham-fisted sports-fans opening, closing, dropping, etc. Also, the spilled beer, weather, etc is a big issue.
What I would include in the spec would be:

1. No external moving parts (ex: laptop screens, swivel antenna, etc)
2. No moving internal parts (ex: harddrives, fans, etc)
3. Touch screen (not tablet, those pens get expensive, a sylus is cheep).
4. Sealed, waterproof. (obvious)
5. Rugged, and oversized (for protection and loss prevention.
6. Wireless, but not specifically 802.11b/g
7. Of course, cheaper the better.

So, the 'no moving parts' bit is part of the ruggedized theory, no hinges to be broken, no prodtruding bits to be snapped off, no harddrives to get nuked from drops, no fans to get clogged or broken (imagine popcorn/catsup all over the fan in your laptop).
Plain old touchscreen beats a tablet because you can touch it with anything. With a tablet you need the special pen, and if you teather it you just violated the first item. Besides, no matter how well you tie it on, it'll get broken off eventually. With a plain touchscreen it can be operated with a finger, or a cheap stylus, or even a regular pen, also your cost drops. On a similar note, it should be in a protective case, and sealed shut. like an oversized version of those rubberized sleaves you can get for iPaqs. This will protect the device, can have an easily replacible window (greasy fingers, sharp pens,random scratches, etc), and with large rubberized edges will reduce the chances of being dropped, lessen the damage when it does happen, and prevent the patrons from hurting themselves.
The protective casing can also help loss prevention by making it too large to slip in a purse or backpack, and can be colored to match the decor of the venue. A friend of mine does something similar with a laser pointer he hands to children to ask questions and point things out at the planitarium he runs.
On the issue of wireless, perhaps it would be cheaper to setup bluetooth access points around each section and have those use 802.11b/g or regular cat5 to link into the network. This reduces the cost per unit as well as increases battery life (you're going to have to recharge these things, and the battery will be the bulk of the weight).
An additional benefit to bluetooth is it's short range, regular access throughout the stadiums, but setup special bluetooth gateways around the exits that will alert security if one of the units is about to leave the venue.

Now here comes the big part. You don't make these things from normal computers running winCE or anything even x86 platform. Set up big servers somewhere safe and put all your processing power there. Make the units run off microcontrollers, running linux or some other free OS, with just enough capability to 1) run the touchscreen (serial or USB HID), the bluetooth, tcp/ip stack, the LCD and some form of terminal software (vnc or a remote X windows session). So then, all the user sessions are running on some beefy servers that can each handle 100 clients running a web browser, or macromedia flash, whatever you're doing the apps in.
Now the clients can easily run off a 16MB CF card using midori-linux + iceWM + rsh (like what i'm running my Compaq IA1 internet appliance on).

So, to summarize, you'd end up with:

1. Micro controller/single board computer (modified ethernut, PC104, etc)
2. Low power consumption/heat output
3. Touchscreen (USB HID or Serial)
4. LCD/OLED screen
5. 16MB CF storage
6. linux + X11 + iceWM + rsh
7. linux servers hosting remote sessions supporting webbrowser/flash/whatever
8. Bluetooth tcp/ip access
9. Bluetooth gateways bridging to cat5/wifi in each section (still cheaper than 802.11b in each unit)
10. Rubberized, protective (device and patron) loss prevention reducing casings
11. and a partridge in a pear tree?

anyways, sorry for the rambling braindump format, i'm done now.

Peer into the future: In too deep!

[UID1000000]

First off, I might be repeating what others have said here but there are a few things to consider, price, prob of damage/theft, ways to track and prevent theft, and programming capabilities.

Here is what I'd say, go with a PDA (PocketPC or Palm) but you'd have to develop some sort of automatic wireless backup software that runs the backup of the softare and data before the battery dies, like at a certain point, 10% of battery left. Otherwise you'd be tired out by constantly reviving and restoring data to the PDAs. This is one of the most annoying featurs of PDAs. Tablets are nice but they're too costly and they're too large, apart from that ALL tablets use the electronic pen. ----The reason this is is b/c if you were trying to write a nice note on a 13" screen your hand would constantly leave a mark in the note you are writing.---- Apart from that Tablet's still only get about the same amount of battery life as a PDA. Furthermore your looking at a harddrive faluire (possibly) each time you have one of the drunk morons (sorry to be an insensitive clod) drop the tablet. A PDA has a flash HD, of sorts, that doesn't lose data when it's dropped. PDAs also usually come with 802.11b integrated (if you go with the PocketPC or Tungsten Palm) which is a bonus.

Apart from price and prob of damage, look at tracking. You'll need to setup some sort of tracking server that would log usage of the units, software to check them out/in, some sort of way to locate them and keep them from leaving the building. I'm not thinking GPS here b/c of that's what all the ACs are going to shout out (clod again) but I'm thinking EAS tags and/or RFID tags. RFID tags can be scanned to give you a general proximity plus an EAS tag with a gate can keep the unit from leaving. Perhaps just an EAS tag would work fine without an RFID.

Lsatly, think about the software that you'll need, how are you going to do all the things that you'll need to do? Someone think of what he/she is going to need. I'm thinking server side software to authenticate, logging of traffic, load balancing, proxy server, POS software, anything else?

Tell MGMT that they're nuts. An easier solution would be to integrate the units right into the seats. Put something sturdy right into the seat in front of the person and tether it. Only put it in classy sections, like bottom, suites, etc. I understand this means a larger investment up front and possibly less return vs number of units but it seems like it would be less of a hassle.

Security

[petard]

Your security concerns are overblown, since these are units that would presumably be rented from a booth in the concourse. I was initially thinking of that myself, but you can solve it in a very low-tech way. Just require a credit card to rent the unit. Any units that don't return or that return with signs of abuse can be charged to the cardholder that rents them. Problem solved. It's the same way that rental cars work today, and a rental car is much higher value than a rental PDA.

The ideas about ruggedizing COTS units are good, but consider the labor involved. Your pricing comments hold true for the ruggedized units; you could negotiate a favorable rate for a bulk purchase + advertizing to bring the cost down and perhaps come out ahead of the labor-intensive solution of ruggedizing your own.

Palm Tungsten C

[macemoneta]

The Palm Tungsten C is (relatively) cheap now ($399/retail qty 1) and you can slip them into a ziplock bag (and use them that way, with the thumb-board). It will keep the units clean, protect the screen from scratching, and make it water resistant/spill proof. I do this when I'm working in less than clean/dry conditions.

They have WiFi (including WEP-128, and a VPN client compatible with Poptop), a graphical SSL web browser, an email client, and can even do SSH2. It's an Xscale 400MHz based PDA, so it may even run Linux some day. :-)

Losses and Damage

[DaRat]

Wouldn't the likelihood for rental unit losses or damage outweigh the potential revenue? A series of distributed stations in the aisles for drink/food orders, sure. But, those rental units are going to have beer spilled on them; they're going to be dropped (a lot); people are going to accidentally drop them in the trash (and forget) them or drop them in the urinal trough and not want to pick them up again. You could make the renters responsible for the replacement cost, but would you rent something if the likelihood of having to shell out $2000 was high?

Sharp zaurus SL-6000

[d^2b]

- integrated wifi
- runs linux, so nobody will steal it :-)
- 1 meter drop tested

I dunno if the gadgets are any good, but you
sound like who sharp had in mind.

I also don't know how water-resistant they are.
FWIW, a random anecdote claimed that they worked
ok after drying out.

But hey, if you wanted something other than random
anecdotes, you wouldn't ask here would you :->

Otterbox.com

[mbrinkm]

A co-worker pointed this website out.

Otterbox.com - Armor PDA Cases

These cases look like a good solution to your needs.