[ILUG] Showroom/Kiosk PC

[Robert Grundulis]

I did something like this a while back for a computer that was being used in
a health care exhibition booth.

What I did was...

- Start X without a window manager.
- Use Firefox witht he Real Kiosk plugin (
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1659), with the home page set
to the required website.
- Attach a second modiffied USB keyboard. I opened it up and taped over the
contacts for Alt,Esc,Ctrl,Windows/Home key etc. This was overkill, but best
to be safe rather than sorry.
- Locked the main unmodified keyboard in the the cabinet below so that I
could manage the terminal if need be.

It was a messy solution, but it worked. Real Kiosk is basic, but does the
job. It fills the screen with the website and removes borders, menus,
navigation bars and right-click menus. It will load any website if linked to
in a page, but defaults to the one set as the home page. Iptables would be
the best way to prevent other websites being loaded if you can't be sure
your chosen website has no links to external sites, in our case the website
was on disk and the computer was not network connected so no need for
firewalling etc.

As for the hardware we were using a bog standard Compaq Evo, the special
hardware was the cabinet holding it all. It was a simple bedroom cabinet
sourced from secondhand shop for $20. Holes were cut in it for cables and
ventiltion and it was given a lick of paint. We had to screw the monitor
down after the first day of the exhibition as people kept thinking it was a
touchscreen and kept knocking it over.

Cheers,
Robert