How to make a Web Kiosk? PI time?

[Farty Penguin]

Short Version

Weird question but I need to build a computer with keyboard and mouse that only allows you to go to one website and if it's not used for 5 minutes goes back to the home page again.

 

Longer Version

I'm a trustee at a charity run theatre. We're very busy but always looking for ways to push content to our punters that they might like. When they are in the bar in the interval they are picking up flyers for future shows (as well as drinking gin) and the same for many on the way out. We want to capitalise on that and provide a facility for them to order tickets to those shows online (we can't afford to staff a box office, ticket sales are online). They are more likely to order if we make it easy than hope they try and remember later on after heading home.

 

I originally put a screen, keyboard, mouse and Raspberry Pi running Web Kiosk on it and that worked for a while until some weird SSL changes on our ticket site through it but something similar could work: https://www.binaryemotions.com/digital-signage/raspberry-webkiosk/

 

Goes without saying that the cheaper the better. I'm the only Techie trustee and any spend on Tech by an Arts charity is an uphill struggle!

 

 

[mariushm]

pi would work, but you could also use boards like these, with cpu soldered to them: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157729

Add a regular DDR3 stick (as little as 11$ new for a 2 GB stick : https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIAHZU8UG2547) and a SATA mechanical or SSD

Add a regular ATX power supply, can be something super cheap since the whole thing would consume less than 50w

Windows can be 5$ or something like that, you can then run a browser in full screen.

 

Another option would be to just buy a cheap refurbished pc. for example this one's 70$ : https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883798476&ignorebbr=1

For 80$ you get one with 160GB hdd and 4GB of memory : https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883798477&ignorebbr=1

 

Comes with Windows 7 license, cpu is powerful enough for a browsing a web page, 4GB is plenty for buying tickets online...

 

If you go this route, I'd suggest using some free software like clonezilla for example, to make a disk image of the hard drive once you configure windows and configure shortcuts on the desktop and all the stuff ... if someone screws up the pc, you could simply boot from a usb stick with the disk image on it and overwrite the hard drive with the disk image from the usb stick.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Meic]

This looks like an possible setup with a RPi and Chrome: https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-kiosk/ And very customisable if you want to make changes.

 

Given you already have the RPi setup, it would be worth giving it a go.

[Farty Penguin]

Thanks folks. The ticket page is not actually ours to play with, 3rd party run it but they host our events.

 

We've got spare Win machines lying around I reckon but it was the config of it I hadn't tried before. I think you're right though, worth trying different software on the Pi, that looks interesting.

Cheers!