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15 tips to bullet-proof your self-service tech
Want your museum or other project to survive years of public use (and abuse)? These simple steps are like Kevlar for kiosks.
At The Iona Group, we produce a lot of experiences for museums and tradeshows. These are often installations that will run for a solid eight-12 hours a day for weeks and be in operation for years on end. (Many exhibits have five-10 year life spans in the museum world.) Uptime and dependability is crucial. Over the course of too many projects to count, I've assembled a list of must-dos for any kiosk we build. These are things that have worked for us and sometimes learned via trial and error. Make sure this kind of thought goes into your kiosk deployment. 1. Uninstall anything that isn't necessary. Spamware, bloatware, crapware … whatever you call it. Many PCs ship with an abundance of free trials and demos of security software, photo-editing junk and lots of other utilities you simply don't need. Uninstall them to free up space and increase stability. You may find it easier to simply wipe the hard drive after getting a PC and reinstalling the OS.
2. Disable all those extra services. Look at the average system tray and process monitor of your average PC. So many cycle and RAM stealing little apps. Get rid of ‘em. A kiosk does not need a Skype Widget, IM bug or Weather Station app.
3.Run network cable to every station. If you can, try to make sure that every machine is network addressable. You might not need it right then, but trust me, it'll come in handy at some point or another. Wireless N is an option as well, but a Gigabit Ethernet connection is better.
4.Install remote monitoring software. VNC, Apple Remote Desktop, Windows Remote Login, whatever you have available, put it in there. It may save you a long stressful drive somewhere. Of course, this kind of requires each machine have network access. (See, I told you No. 3 would come in handy.)
5. Use UPS (uninterruptible power supplies) whenever possible. You don't want a power blip taking down your piece. A relatively inexpensive UPS can provide enough protection and peace of mind that you really should just plan purchasing one for each kiosk right from the start. Make it part of your routine hardware estimation process.
6. Test temperature, modify cabinets or cases accordingly. Computers get hot. Frequently, cabinets for installations are tight and offer poor ventilation. As part of your testing and burn in, run a temp monitoring software. Note the PCs temp after five minutes running, then at 50 minutes, and then at five hours. If the PC is still running, great. If the temp seems a little higher than you think it should be (anything over 70° C is cause for alarm, IMHO), you probably need better ventilation. If you can switch PCs to a lower power usage, great, do it. If not, it's time to modify the cabinets and put an exhaust fan or two in the cabinet. Get some standard-size or even small PC fans, and wire them into the power supply via a Molex connector. See the temp drop accordingly.
7. Schedule startup and shutdown. A timed circuit typically does startup and shutdown of an exhibit. This is easy for the museum staff to manage. This is also generally bad for your hardware's long-term health. I recommend scheduling the shutdown via a scheduled task on a PC. A Mac has this capability in the Energy Saver preferences. Automated startup is also nice to have on an exhibit, as it requires a lot less human intervention on the beginning of a day. Macs again win in this department as the OS manages it. On a Windows PC, you are going to need to set this up through the computer's BIOS. A safe and programmed startup and shutdown is going to lead to fewer HDD issues and far fewer Windows disk checks, and more. In conjunction with this, obviously, putting your app in the system's startup folder is a great idea, but you may want to write a startup.bat batch script of AppleScript to start things up a bit after the system has fully initialized. This will allow for any extra drivers or third party utilities to be running before the experience kicks in.
8. Protect the desktop. This is of paramount importance. If your app crashes, what does the visitor see? Hopefully very little. I recommend using an application like Public PC Desktop to lock everything down. The desktop will be hidden, keyboard input can be limited and virtually everything you don't want a user to mess with is disabled. I have used this utility many times and it has never failed.
9. Install an "Always UP" utility. I know your app will never crash, ensuring that the kiosk is always doing what it should, right? Well, just to be on the safe side, consider running a utility like "Always Up." This little genius monitors active processes to check that your desired app is running. If it is, no big deal. If the app has hung or otherwise crashed it can restart it. Additionally, the application can be configured to email a contact should something prove to be unrecoverable. Bullet proof.
10. Clone the hard-drive. When everything is done, what sort of security/peace of mind is there? A great deal, if you have an exact clone of the hard drive of the machine you just installed. Trust me on this, the extra $100 for the disk and the little effort it takes today to produce a drive clone is totally worth it. Install Acronis on a PC or Super Duper on a Mac to help you with that.
11. Purchase the OEM support. Most PC manufacturers offer 24/7 next support or at least two-day support for business hours. These agreements usually cover just about anything that would happen to a PC in average situations. Fried Motherboards, failed power supplies, etc. Covered. Pay for this now or you'll pay for it later.
12. Use as low power of a CPU/GPU as possible to get the job done. It's easy to get enamored with hardware. A hot new CPU and ridiculously powerful GPU are fun to develop for. You can really stretch yourself and provide top tier experiences for your client. A small bit of guidance though. IF you can provide a great experience on a second generation of technology or a slightly less powerful CPU, do it. The extra reliability offered by a second or third revision of a machine is oftentimes a significant increase in stability and heat/cooling problems.
13. Hide the cursor well. Purchase a utility to hide the cursor. Using the Windows control panel is a pain and is unreliable.
14. Use logging software. Crank up logging in the Windows Event viewer. Make sure applications keep a simple log of their activity, too. If a problem ever does arise, you'll at least have a good starting ground for analyzing what went wrong, when it went wrong and where to go from there.
15. Disable auto updates if possible. Windows update and all the other auto updating software options on your PCs should probably be turned off if you can manage it. A PC that doesn't require tons of security patches etc should especially have this service disabled.
The writer is lead developer forThe Iona Group, a corporate communications company centered on creating solutions which educate and motivate target audiences. Through the use of proprietary 4D methodology, The Iona Group integrates its skills, expertise and experience with leading technologies to create a user experience that best meets client needs. Reprinted with permission from visualrinse.com.
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