[Bradford] Lock down android tablet for public use

[David Carpenter]

Thanks everyone for all your replies on this.

I've passed the info on and I'll keep you informed with what they end up
doing.

Cheers
David
On Wed, 2012-08-01 at 14:08 +0100, Alice Kaerast wrote:
> After a brief discussion with our innovation team, they suggest that
> if your buttons are hardware buttons then you can build a physical
> frame around them so people cannot physically press them -
> particularly if you are planning on mounting these tablets anyway.  If
> they are soft-buttons provided by the OS itself then there are
> probably ways of hiding/disabling these.
> 
> If you're building an application yourself then you can also make it
> really difficult to quit the application by forcing the user to
> provide a password to exit.  But of course you'd also need to disable
> the hard/soft home button.
> 
> Hope this helps
> 
> Alice
> 
> 
> On 31 July 2012 18:40, Alice Kaerast <alice at kaerast.info> wrote:
> > There are apps which allow parental locks, such as this one:
> > https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vlobe.smartappcloud.android.parentalcontrol
> > but judging from the reviews it either works great or not at all.
> >
> > If you've got control over the network then you've a much better
> > chance of stopping people accessing the outside world from the
> > tablets.  If you connect all the tablets to your Google Apps domain
> > then you also get some level of group-wide control, although I wasn't
> > really paying much attention to that bit in our last training session.
> >
> > Finally, on the topic of Android - our mobile developer is looking for
> > Leeds/Bradford based mobile developer groups to join if anybody knows
> > about any.
> >
> > Regards
> > Alice
> >
> >
> > On 31 July 2012 10:11, David Carpenter <david.carpenter at nornir.co.uk> wrote:
> >> A friend has asked me the following and I though the list might be a
> >> source of help/inspiration...
> >>
> >> This is an art gallery that has a number of Android tablets: Model is
> >> the A1CS Fusion5
> >> http://www.amazon.co.uk/A1CS-FUSION5-Tablet-PC-Capacitive/dp/B007SHWKFQ
> >>
> >> "They are for use as part of an exhibition in a public art gallery, with
> >> a wide variety of people using them. We'll be playing back mp3 sound
> >> files by various different artists/musicians arranged into groups
> >> (effectively 'albums').
> >>
> >> We need an audio/media player that offers a decent amount of user
> >> interface customisation - basically to make it super simple to use, but
> >> that also allows us to include our own image for each track and a good
> >> paragraph of text information that can be viewed while listening to the
> >> track too.
> >>
> >> We have tried various media player apps from the Google Play store, they
> >> all look and work in pretty much the same way and don't really do what
> >> we want them to. Some are too confusing to use and it is easy to get
> >> 'lost', and none of them allow us to include the text information as we
> >> would like.
> >>
> >> We could make each audio file into a video file, with a still image
> >> displaying the text information - this is a possible way round this
> >> problem (using a video player instead, of course).
> >>
> >> The main issue is the functionality - being able to stop all tracks
> >> playing and return to an overall menu screen at the single touch of a
> >> button etc.
> >>
> >> We're prepared to flash the ROM on these things and install a new OS if
> >> that will help, but if anyone has any ideas about how we can get what we
> >> want, I would be very interested to hear their thoughts!"
> >>
> >> So looks to me like they need a locked down tablet so guests can only
> >> access the music app, and then perhaps a customisable player, or an open
> >> source/free software version that *could* be tweaked in the code
> >>
> >> Anyone had any experience of this?
> >>
> >> Thanks
> >> David
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> David Carpenter
> >>
> >> nornir
> >>
> >> E: david.carpenter at nornir.co.uk
> >> Skype: carpenter.david
> >>
> >> Please save paper and only print this email if you have to.
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Bradford mailing list
> >> Bradford at mailman.lug.org.uk
> >> https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/bradford
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Mx Alice Kaerast
> > Devops supergirl, agile coach, corporate sysadmin, optimisationeer
> 
> 
> 

-- 
David Carpenter

nornir

E: david.carpenter at nornir.co.uk
Skype: carpenter.david

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