Dear all,
I'm writing a post on my blog (www.culture-communication.fr) about iPads as
stationary display in exhibits.
Your email exchange is very interesting though I'd like to know why you'd
prefer using iPads vs classical screens that are less expensive and can propose
more or less similar content.
Do you have any advice on that topic ? Why in the MIT Museum or in G?tebeorg
Library or in the Peel Heritage Complex, do you (want to) use iPads ?
Thanks a lotand lookin forward to hearing from you,
Best regards,
Aude MATHEY
www.culture-communication.fr
?
De?: Allan Doyle afdoyle at MIT.EDU
??: mcn-l at mcn.edu
Envoy? le : Jeudi 21 Juillet 2011 22h37
Objet?: Re: [MCN-L] Using iPads as stationary display
From: Farrell, David David.Farrell at peelregion.ca
Date: July 21, 2011 3:19:10 PM EDT
To: 'Museum Computer Network Listserv' mcn-l at mcn.edu
Subject: [MCN-L] Using iPads as stationary display
Reply-To: Museum Computer Network Listserv mcn-l at mcn.edu
Hi all - In the last few months there have been posts to this list concerned
the use of iPads in museums, but mostly in the context of visitor being able
to use one made available by the museums in galleries or learning lounges,
and presumably able to walk around with them. We are considering using iPads
as touch screen exhibits, mounted on a stands and using local files
(galleries are not wifi enabled).
Peel Heritage Complex staff would like to know if other museums have done
anything similar. From previous posts to this list I am aware of some of the
issues surrounding public use of iPads such as limiting icons, making
Settings inaccessible and locking it down. At this stage we would like to
know how well using iPads as touchscreen displays works, if there are any
pitfalls (not necessarily of a technical nature) and if anyone has produced a
best practices document for using iPads or similar devices in exhibition
galleries, rather than the specific software that will be needed.
We're using iPad 1's in the MIT Museum. We have 5 in use in our main galleries
and one at a satellite gallery. They are definitely a mixed blessing.
We don't have any project documentation yet on our setup but here's a quick
rundown:
Mounting - we use the LabShield bracket, (http://labshield.com/). They have a
newer version that we have not tried yet (http://ipadkioskmount.com/)
The stainless steel brackets cut down the WiFi signal strength quite a bit,
this was an issue in our satellite gallery. We're in the middle of designing
and testing a laser-cut acrylic holder and will install two of those in
August/September. The metal brackets can also produce spurious touch events if
the iPad is not perfectly centered in the opening.
Audio - the built-in audio is loud enough so you don't have to use external
amplifiers and speakers. We do, however have four with external DTA-1
amplifiers running to Bose cube speakers mounted overhead.
Power - we either run the USB cable directly from the Apple power brick or run
it via a USB extender. One oddity here is that the Apple power brick itself is
made of two parts, the power part and the plug part. One of our iPads loses
power randomly and the fix involves separating the plug from the brick and
plugging it back together. This persists in spite of having replaced, in turn,
the iPad, the brick, the USB cable, and the outlet strip it's plugged in to.
Software - we use iCabMobile and have all of our content on a web server. We
set the iPad to run through a proxy HTTP server which is actually a Squid cache
server that is set up to disallow access outside the museum. iCabMobile is very
robust. However, visitors seem to still be able to break out and get at the
full iPad functions, so we've also turned on all restrictions on the iPads.
Building web pages for the iPads requires a good understanding of Javascript
and the multi-touch events offered by the iPads (or iOS in general). I've found
it necessary to disable most multi-touch and iPad specific gestures so people
can't do things like pinch-spread an image or double-tap text to zoom and then
get lost in the page.
A quirk of iOS is that videos cannot be made to play unless there has been a
direct user touch. There is no way to boot an iPad into a web page and have a
video start on its own. Audio levels are controllable only by the external
buttons.
Delivering video requires fine-tuning the bitrate on the video since everything
will be running over WiFi. If the video streams are too big they will stall and
freeze. It's not always easy to get them to restart.
On top of all that, every few days a given iPad will stop responding to any
touch. At that point the fix is to manually push the on/off button, something
that takes a few minutes since you have to unlock the case, get at the iPad,
fiddle with it, then lock it up again.
I've started investigating using Jailbreaking to gain more
