Self-Serve Kiosk

[Hal Snodgrass]

I'm new here and am not sure whether this is the best place to post this so please let me know if it should go elsewhere.
I do some work for a not-for-profit gallery who have a self-serve kiosk that interactively displays images.
This system was not put together by me and is not the way I would have approached this installation. The NFP is like all NFP's and not rolling in cash.
The hardware is comprised of a couple of touchscreens with Intel compute sticks connected to the HDMI ports which run Windows 10. The compute sticks boot up and load Google Chrome in kiosk mode; they are pointed to an Intel NUC which serves as the web server.
The Intel NUC also runs windows 10 with the web server runs a Wordpress Site using an AMPPS Stack.
This kiosk is not stable and crashes frequently; so my plan is to replace the NUC with a Linux box running a LAMP stack which should improve the server performance but I would like some input on the clients for the Compute Sticks which are the most unreliable part of the system.
My plan for the Compute sticks is to replace Windows 10 with copies Porteus Kiosk; I've had a brief play with it, and it seems quite stable but I would like to ask if anyone has had any experience with Porteus on Compute Sticks or knows of a better product?
If anyone can think of a better solution I would be happy to hear it too.

 

[Markverhyden]

Can't answer the Porteus thing but I've worked with many Kiosk type systems. For touch screen they have always been one cpu per screen.

Whats the content streaming? Any RSS feed type stuff like weather and news? Raspberry Pi's are very popular for low cost installations. What's the current physical setup?

 

[Hal Snodgrass]

The hardware setup is 2 Intel Compute Sticks as the web clients, both with touchscreens.

The web server is currently the Intel NUC.

everything connects via WiFi

The content is primarily images of cartoons and caricatures stored as files and indexed by a MySQL database. All the content is hosted on the web server so doesn't require access to the internet.

I would prefer to keep all the hardware with the exception of the server which I will donate as I don't believe the NUC has enough grunt.

Porteus Kiosk info can be found here http://porteus-kiosk.org/

 

[Markverhyden]

Actually I'd think that the compute sticks might be a big part of the problem. I've worked with them on a handful of occasions. A jewelry store chain that used them attached to a digital camera on a gem microscopes to transmit pictures from the scope. They were incredibly slow, frequent freezes.

What does event viewer show on the sticks and NUC?

If feasible I'd try swapping out one stick with a conventional CPU to see what happens. I've got plenty of companies I work with using NUC for media players and, while they drive one screen, can stream dynamic content without a problem.

What model screens?

 

[Hal Snodgrass]

Thanks for the info on the Compute Sticks, I have tested the load times on other Windows 10 machines and there is a notable difference in speed. I haven't loaded Porteus on a stick natively yet so might try that on 1 of them as it is a lot more lightweight than Windows 10.

I haven't looked at the events yet.

The NUC has about 22,000 images on it and running Windows 10 and an AMPSS stack seems to me to be more of a development environment rather and production.

The screens are two Acer T272HUL, they seem to be the best part of the system.