Creating a web dashboard kiosk

A kiosk computer provides some limited amount of functionality to the end user, such as allowing access to a single application. Common public examples are digital signage displays or touchscreen booths. Often this is accomplished by configuring the kiosk to display a single webpage which provides the desired service.

In an industrial setting, an instrument or process might be operated or monitored by a dedicated workstation running an appropriate application. Developers and administrators of a critical process may make the choice to control which applications can be run on the dedicated workstation in order to improve security and reliability.

Building interfaces and displays with SberMobile Dashboards and deploying them in kiosks can be an effective alternative to deploying purpose built software on host machines.

This guide is intended to demonstrate how Web UI Dashboards developed in the SberMobile Web UI can be deployed as kiosks on various systems. This guide considers the steps for Windows 10 Enterprise Edition in detail, and provides some direction for configuring a similar kiosk with Red Hat Linux.

The machine which will host the kiosk must have network access to the SberMobile instance hosting the target Dashboard, and be running either Windows 11 or Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise, or Education edition.

Once the kiosk is running, the operator needs an input method to provide credentials for the Web UI in order to log in to the SberMobile server and open the Dashboard.

The supported Windows editions offer a number of ways to set up a kiosk. We will be using the Assigned Access application, one of several possible approaches provided by Windows.

• Open the “Set up a kiosk (assigned access)” application from the search bar.

• Choose “Get Started” and put in a name for your kiosk.

• To create a kiosk which will access SberMobile web UI, choose “Microsoft Edge” as the kiosk app.

• By choosing “digital sign or interactive display”, end users will only be able to access the webpage you indicate, in this case the Dashboard.

• Indicate the address where the target Dashboard is located. If you want the Dashboard to be accessible without needing to login to SberMobile periodically, set the restart rate to never.

• Either restart the computer or sign out of the current user. The Web UI of SberMobile will automatically load in a full screen version of the Edge browser.

• Upon reload, you are directed to the SberMobile login screen, from where you can open the desired Dashboard.

In the example provided above, the Kiosk will open automatically when the host computer is restarted. If the input device allows the user to send the ctrl+alt+del command, the host device will display the Windows login screen. This will expose the usernames of other accounts on the host machine as well as the name of the kiosk, but no other system resources will be available. Return to the kiosk by clicking on the kiosk name in the list of users.

Various Linux flavors also offer options to create kiosks. Red Hat offers a comprehensive tutorial on configuring a single webpage kiosk which might serve as a starting point. If the host machine will only be responsible for running the kiosk, consider running a purpose built kiosk IOS, such as Porteus or Webconverger to access the SberMobile Dashboard. Note that any mention of third party software should not be considered an endorsement or guarantee thereof.