Features
What happens on the device – and what you see of it
gemelo Kiosk has two parts: an app that runs on the Android tablet, and a management console in the browser. Everything that follows is set in the management console – the device fetches it.
Device management
A full MDM – not just an app in full screen
gemelo Kiosk is a mobile device management solution for Android. During set-up the kiosk app is made device owner – the highest management role Android knows. That puts complete control over the device in your hands – not the visitor’s, and not left to chance.
- Install and remove applications silently – without the Play Store, without a Google account, without anyone confirming anything on the device.
- Time window for system updates – you decide when Android may install a downloaded update (and therefore restart). At night between 2 and 4, say, rather than in the middle of opening hours. The management shows per device whether an update is waiting.
- Distribute your own root certificates – for sites with their own certificate authority or an intercepting proxy. Withdrawing them works the same way.
- Store Wi-Fi credentials – the devices connect by themselves, nobody has to type the password on site.
- Set system settings – brightness, volume, screen timeout, rotation lock. What you do not touch stays untouched.
- Save power in the charging rack – the screen turns off as soon as the charger is plugged in. Your own app also receives settings from the management, per project and per device – without a restart.
- Lock keys and menus – volume keys individually, the power menu device-wide, safe boot included.
- USB debugging remotely on and off – on for a service call, off again afterwards.
- Identify devices reliably – under Android the hardware serial number is available to the device owner only. Along with the Android version, the security patch level and the installed app versions.
Android hands out this role only when a factory-reset device is first set up – exactly when you scan the QR code. It cannot be added quietly afterwards, and a factory reset takes it away again. That is Android’s security promise, and we keep to it.
The locked mode
- Android holds on to the app – not just full screen: home screen, back key and notifications are off.
- Volume keys can be locked individually – the usual case: quieter yes, louder no.
- The power menu can be locked (power off, restart, emergency call) – device-wide, safe boot included.
- A hidden way out for staff – via a key sequence, then the PIN pad.
- The PIN can be changed remotely – 4 to 8 digits, for the project or for a single device. No re-provisioning needed.
- Start countdown – the window in which somebody on site can reach the PIN pad before the application takes over again.
- A way back into the kiosk – in case a foreign app does end up in the foreground, offline as well.
- Runs offline – if the Wi-Fi fails, the terminal starts anyway.
Set-up by QR code
The management console creates one code per project. You scan it when the factory-reset tablet first starts – it contains:
- the Wi-Fi credentials of the exhibition
- the address of the management console the device should report to
- the project the device belongs to
- the start PIN for your staff
With that the device sets itself up and reports in. Ten devices for the same exhibition are the same single move, ten times.
Your application, three ways
You choose in the management console what should run on the terminal:
- Your own app (APK) – upload it, assign it to the project, done. The devices download and install it themselves. The management console reads the version and version number straight out of the file.
- A website – one address in full screen, with the rules you set. No address bar, no way out to other sites.
- A video – a film in full screen, looping or starting on touch. You choose which controls the visitor gets and can show an instruction on top. The device plays the film from the network or downloads it once and then manages without a connection.
You roll out a new version the same way – upload, assign. Nobody has to take a tablet out of its case.
In day-to-day operation
Reports
The devices report in regularly with their condition and version. Anything that has gone quiet for a while stands out in the overview.
Inherited settings
The default sits on the project, the exception on the device. What you do not touch stays untouched – the tablet’s system settings included.
Updates
The kiosk app updates itself, and so does your application – driven from the management console, not from a store.
Licences
Licensing is per device. The licence sits signed on the device and is checked offline as well.
Condition
Power, battery and temperature at a glance
Every report from a device brings five readings with it: the charge level, whether it is on mains power, the battery temperature, Android’s throttling status and its verdict on the battery. They are shown in the device list – sortable and colour-coded, so nobody has to hunt through thirty detail pages for them.
Power supply
A permanently mounted tablet always sits at 100 % – the figure is boring until it drops. Then the power supply has failed, the socket is dead or somebody pulled the plug. You see it hours before the device switches off and starts to look like a network problem. Below 20 % without mains power the figure turns red.
Temperature
Is the device standing in the sun? Is it cooking inside a closed display case? The battery temperature answers exactly that question about the housing. Next to it stands Android’s own throttling status – because when it gets critical depends on the device: 43 °C is normal operation on one tablet and just short of stuttering on another.
History
The device page holds 90 days as a curve: temperature, charge level and the periods without mains power shaded in. That is how you see “this device cooks every afternoon from 2 pm” or “the plug is loose” – which a single current reading never shows.
The readings travel along with the report that happens anyway – they cost the device no additional radio connection and therefore no battery life. What a device does not provide is left empty rather than set to zero: Android only knows the throttling status from version 10 onwards, and a tablet without a battery sensor reports no temperature. An implausible reading is discarded – no reading is more honest than an invented one.
Remote maintenance
Step in without driving there
Three actions for a single device or for many at once – triggered in the management console, collected by the device on its next report.
Restart
Restart a terminal remotely – one device or the whole exhibition at once. That, too, only a device owner can do. If you like, have them restart daily at a fixed time. A misclick can be taken back as long as the device has not collected it yet.
Find a device
Which of the twelve tablets is the one marked in the management console? A ping makes exactly that one beep once and flash its screen white briefly. You can see it from the other end of the room – without touching a single device.
Live pace
Normally a device reports in every five minutes – economical, but slow going when you are standing in front of it. Fast pace sets that to five seconds for a quarter of an hour. Afterwards it switches back by itself, even if the connection drops.
A kiosk accepts no incoming connections – that is rather the point. So an action is queued and collected on the next report. When it has to be quick, switch on the live pace: everything after that arrives within seconds.
Several institutions, kept apart
The management console is multi-tenant: one institution’s projects, devices, applications and users are separate from everyone else’s. Permissions apply per tenant – someone who may do everything at your place may therefore do nothing at all elsewhere.
Signing in works with e-mail and password or with your organisation’s Microsoft account.
On your own premises too
gemelo Kiosk runs as a hosted service – or on your own server, if the devices are not allowed to leave the building. The address of the management console is part of the provisioning code; a code generated at your end points at your server.
Three clicks to a trial account
No quote, no appointment, no payment details: create an account, set up a project, generate a QR code – and the first tablet is running. 14 days with up to 10 devices.
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