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 Hardware
The hardware we use for creating the
kiosk consists of several main parts: a standard PC, a
touchscreen monitor, a CD burner, and MP3 players. The
main problems in this configuration arise from the MP3
players. We did considerable research to determine which
players would be easiest to support in our given timeframe,
and we came to the conclusion that players which appear
to the computer as external hard drives would be the best.
In this category, we chose the Creative Nomad MuVo and
the RCA Lyra, two popular players. CD burning support,
while planned, is currently not supported.
Client
Software
The client side of the kiosk consists
of a custom client application and a Macromedia Director
interface. Using Director to drive the interface allows
our artists to modify the kiosk interface in a familiar
environment and, more importantly, without programmer
intervention. The custom software running on the kiosk
will manage the content existing on the local machine,
and it will be able to download updates from a centralized
server. The client software also will handle copying selected
music to various music devices. In order to support the
two MP3 players we have chosen for the prototype, the
client software first scans the system to find existing
drives. When an MP3 player shows up as a new drive, the
software detects system files on the player to determine
which kind of device it is, and then copies either an
MP3 or Windows Media Audio file to the device.
Server
Software
The server software is not yet written,
but much of the foundation exists already in the client
software, which will speed development and better ensure
compatibility between the client and server. For our prototype,
the planned server functionality is the ability to update
the content on a client kiosk. Future versions of the
server, handling actual in-store clients, should have
support for customer login verification, as well as transaction
database functionality.
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