Kiosk Hardware & Browser Setup

There are many hardware profiles you can use.

In general they will consist of;

• Small pc

• Touch screen

• Internet connection

• Optional keyboard and/or mouse.

It may help to think of your kiosk configuration as either a;

• Desktop Kiosk, which has a keyboard and mouse and is used in a desktop-like fashion, plus the addition of a touch screen.

• Tablet Kiosk, which has no keyboard and mouse and relies entirely on touch. For any text entry, an on-screen keyboard is used.

SA5 Kiosk will work with either.

Using Google Chrome as your Kiosk Platform

SA5 Kiosk is built & tested around use of Google Chrome as the operating environment. This is a very simple setup, but it saves you the cost of custom software development for your kiosk device.

Google Chrome has a built in kiosk mode, which runs full screen, hides the URL bar, right click menu and other features.

It provides a solid base for a simple, low-cost kiosk platform.

How to Start Chrome in Kiosk Mode

This is for a Windows-based kiosk, if your kiosk is Mac-based it should be similar.

To start Chrome in kiosk mode you want to specify 3 things on the command line;

• Kiosk mode, using the --kiosk parameter.

• The kiosk homepage URL to start with

• A kiosk-specific user agent so that SA5 can differentiate kiosk browser visits from regular browser visits. We use a user agent of KioskApp/1.0

When starting Chrome, that looks something like this;

chrome.exe --kiosk https://www.mysite.com/kiosk --user-agent="KioskApp/1.0"

Or for your staging site while you're testing your kiosk;

chrome.exe --kiosk https://mysite.webflow.io/kiosk --user-agent="KioskApp/1.0"

On a Windows s

Note, if Chrome is not in your environment path you may need to locate it and use the full path. On a Windows system, the default installatio path is usually;

"C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe"

Create a Desktop Shortcut

To easily start the kiosk mode, I recommend setting up a desktop shortcut using the full command above. That way simply double-clicking it will launch your kiosk

Exiting the Kiosk

If you need to exit the kiosk and you have a keyboard attached, hit CTRL+F4.

Kiosk Setup