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Ask Slashdot: Making a Tablet Run Only One Application?
An anonymous reader asks "I'm working for a medical centre who want to make a tablet with various videos and webpages about smoking cessation available in their waiting room. The tablet can't access the Internet because of security policies. I'm planning to use a local server with copies of the (Creative Commons) videos and pages accessed through local webpages using the tablet's browser. How can I make only the browser be available to the tablet users? Ideas? Suggestions?"
Just roll your own AOSP build that only has /system/app/Browser.apk along with essential system UI apks and include none of the networking drivers that the device needs.
I mean seriously - the first time someone thinks they can walk out the door with the tablet, it's gone. Don't think it wouldn't happen.
Why not instead just make a dvd with those videos and print out the text of the websites? You could have a small tv hooked up to a dvd player, have the dvd available to those interested, etc....
It wouldn't be as convenient to steal, and it is a technically easier way to set something like this up. Why are you going to such great lengths to make something more complicated than necessary?
Without knowing what Tablet OS you are targeting it is difficult to give you advice. You can just search on google for the terms "kiosk mode" + whatever OS and that should give you what you are looking for.
Is there a reason your organization wants this to be easy-to-steal-and-expensive tablets?
The hospital management is being treated well by the tablet manufacturer, who would very much like this hospital to become the envy of the `non-tablet' hospitals. Plus, it's healthcare; they have money to burn.
Android Tutorial: http://www.basic4ppc.com/forum/basic4android-getting-started-tutorials/10839-android-kiosk-mode-tutorial.html
iPad: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kiosk-pro/id409918026?mt=8
DOS 1.1 - one app at a time, done!
Table-ized A.I.
Bruce Schneier linked to this post on iPads just a few days ago....
If the hospital management is being treated well by the tablet manufacturer, then why isn't the tablet manufacturer helping with a solution to lock down the tablet? Surely of anyone they should know best how to lock there own tablets down.
Just paint a black frame around some rectangular mirrors and put a big reversed brochure printout on the ceiling. Nobody will know the diff and you can keep the real tablets for yourself. (My experience at AOL is paying off.)
Table-ized A.I.
generally speaking, the ones burning the money are not the ones complaining about the pay
" Plus, it's healthcare; they have money to burn."
Yet the bastards whine they are not paid enough...
Don't confuse money that's available to be burnt with money that's available to pay said illegitimate children. I work in healthcare. We have a LOT of money available for goofy stuff like this that increases somebody's adoption of something electronic related to healthcare. It all comes from the federal government, and is earmarked for those specific types of projects. What we don't have is money to actually pay the people that provide healthcare service, in large part due to that same entity.
iPad in Kiosk mode:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mediakiosk/id352741530?mt=8
Android in Kiosk mode:
http://www.42gears.com/blog/2011/10/kiosk-mode-on-android/
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
That sounds just like a job long ago for a restauranteur.
.MP3 requests for a DOS MP3 player, but the owner had other vendors in mind.
He wanted one of those hi-tech looking displays showing his food, menus, and prices. He had the "high tech display": his projection TV.
What he ended up with was his old PC-AT home computer yanked from a pile in his garage and loaded with a bunch of GIF's and JPG's he created to his heart's content on his nicer home computer. Loaded all the images he wanted to display in a subdirectory, along with a DOS slideshow program. A little edit of Autoexec.bat and config.sys, and every time the computer was turned on, all it knew to do was start the slideshow and run it until power was turned off at the end of the day.
It was a no-brainer being he plugged the whole shebang into his beer-sign lighting circuit. There was no change to the routine for his help in opening shop for business. When they turned on the beer-sign circuit as usual, his "high tech display" would start up and run until they turned off the beersign lights at the end of the day.
He was aware of the limitations of the system, so he made his images with that in mind. He could create anything he wanted for it to display, with no more intervention from me.
He seemed happy enough. He was ready to toss it all anyway, and all it cost him was a dinner for me and my buddy.
I wanted so bad to do something for a '50s style diner in my area to retrofit those table-controlled jukeboxes as a serial terminal so I could queue up
That would have been fun, as I wanted to keep all the old vacuum tube amplifiers running, and even the record selector, but what would actually go through the system would be a MP3, not what was coming off the tone arm... the spinning record being "played" would be just for show. It would not make any difference at all what 45rpm record was in the slot... its just there for people to reminisce seeing things behave and hearing that 120Hz hum in it, just like it did when they, like I, was a kid.
I could rip all the MP3's I needed because he already had licenses from all the copyright people to play copyrighted music in his place. So I could load up the machine with anything. I thought it would be a nice touch if he kept his customer's favorites on the machine, as well as honoring requests. I even have an old mechanical typewriter so I could make more of those tags for the table units so they still looked like they came from the '50s.
Boy, did I ever date myself with this post.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]