Stadium WiFi and Weatherproof Tablet PCs?

StadiumOutfitter asks: "I've been tasked with setting up a wireless network for an open air stadium - not just for internet access but potentially with in seat food/drink orders and even interactive game related content. That's the easy part, really. What I'd really like to find is a rugged and weatherproof handheld device (tablet or PDA style) that can do Wifi. The plan is to rent them out during gamedays for people who want to participate, but can't bring a laptop. Any suggestions?

Misquote

[CowboyNick]

...rugged and weatherproof handheld device...

this should read "spilled beer and crazy drunks"

Here's one. Looks good but expensive.

[petard]

Just such a beast was mentioned here on slashdot [slashdot.org] recently. It's a WinCE device with two CF slots, so it's perfectly capable of 802.11x. Read a review here [trustedreviews.com] or order one here [tdsway.com].

It's quite pricy, but if you think you can rent them out (especially at pro-sporting event level prices!), I suspect you can recover the cost pretty neatly. Can you tell us which stadium it is?

Re:Here's one. Looks good but expensive.

[KaLogain]

the point of ask slashdot is to get people's advice of people they would trust over a simple ask google.

Re:Here's one. Looks good but expensive.

[nuggetman]

http://www.pocketpcdn.com/articles/kiosk.html

If you go w/ a PPC solution, this will let you force any program to run in "Kiosk" mode, meaning none of the Windows Mobile interface (close button, other programs, etc) will be accessible.

Re:Here's one. Looks good but expensive.

[polyiguana]

Maybe the Big Phone Booth [tmcnet.com] (SBC Park)?

Re:Here's one. Looks good but expensive.

[UID1000000]

The Recon unit is nice but it's too expensive. I think that you should go cheap like Dell Axim or Toshiba e800 and that you should "ruggedize" it yourself.

Think about the cost savings benefit and the replaceability. Depending on negotiations I'm sure that you could get them dirt cheap (considering their list price, the winning company also gets free or co-op marketing) and have them throw in a warranty that covers dropping, etc. Then make sure the warranty also covers modifications, such as silicon, epox

Security

[petard]

Your security concerns are overblown, since these are units that would presumably be rented from a booth in the concourse. I was initially thinking of that myself, but you can solve it in a very low-tech way. Just require a credit card to rent the unit. Any units that don't return or that return with signs of abuse can be charged to the cardholder that rents them. Problem solved. It's the same way that rental cars work today, and a rental car is much higher value than a rental PDA.

The ideas about ruggedizi

Why?

[DAldredge]

Why would anyone want to take a laptop to a sporting event? On first glance this appears to be as smart as shipping 50lbs bags of dog food via UPS.

Re:Why?

[Johnathon_Dough]

Well, by the number of people I see walking to SBC Park in San Francisco with laptop bags. A bunch of them do. From the two times I have been to Games there, the onlyplace you have to worry about having crap spilled onto your pricey equipment is if you are in the bleachers. The rest of the time, I would use the term lethargic to describe the average fan there.

OT: [rant]I have worked less than 3 block from that damn ballpark ever since it opened. And Damnit. I now hate baseball and baseball fans...and all t

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Put up a web site with the piss-idiots and use the words SBC park, Giants, etc alot on the site, get everyone to link to it by having some blidiots mention it in their blogs.

People will love to see their "out sick" co-workers on the web pissing in public. Mention Camila Harris (sp ?) a bunch of times, too - and the new chief of police, there are certainly enough prima-dona motorcycle cops standing around doing nothing, they could ticket some pissers...

Use a lower cost alternative

[tres]

You're talking about a lot of capital investment just roaming around the park. I imagine your corp will already be putting the responsibility onto the client for return of an operational device.

It seems that the best way to recoup costs is not to buy some ruggedized, high-cost version of something that may or may not be popular. Think about the industry as a whole; you probably can't count on any end-user device being attractive to customers for more than a year. There will always be newer and better to replace the older.

Just bulk buy the regular version of the device for a reduced price and rent a protective jacket as an additional cost.

This a) provides an additional revenue stream (think embroidered team logos and reselling your device for markup), and b) reaffirms to the client the idea that it is, in fact, their responsibility to return the device in good working order. Protective sleeves are easily replaceable by anyone. Rather than paying a tech lots of dollars to repair a ruggedized device, you can replace protective covers with minimal overhead.

Re:Use a lower cost alternative

[burns210]

how about a palm pilot with wifi card?

go in and setups the preferences and remove all the unneeded software.

Re:Use a lower cost alternative

[WebCrapper]

Palms are a little too small for your average fan. The older ones will complain they can't see the screen and the younger ones will complain that there isn't enough room for extras on the screen. They also suffer from people pressing too hard on the screen - heck - a lot of JCPenny stores use them for their gift registry and they can't keep them up because people just press too hard. Other than that, they can be very rugged. The other thing is, by the time you pop the WiFi card in and go, I'm sure the palm

Re:Use a lower cost alternative

[Myself]

I agree that the failure rate between rugged and standard hardware won't be different enough to justify the price delta. People will find a way to break the rugged stuff, if only to prove that it can be broken.

A padded neoprene sleeve with a vinyl window, slipped over a device that was designed well in the first place, should be plenty for most applications. If you really want rugged hardware, Google is much faster than Ask Slashdot, and it has a lower percentage of comments saying "you should've googled, idiot!".

Test screens for sunlight viewability. If beeps and boops are required, test speakers for audibility. Test batteries for operation over a wide temperature range, and make sure the manufacturer will replace any batteries that fail or degrade prematurely. Make sure dust and crud won't gum up the buttons or charging contacts.

Good luck getting wireless connectivity with no bits that stick out. Antennae don't last long, and they're hard to weatherproof.

The wireless part has me curious. How does your radio scheme deal with huge numbers of users in a small area? If you're trying to broadcast content to all of them at once, do the protocols support doing it with a single transmission? Does the application software?

Furthermore, for interactive applications where the user devices will be transmitting, does the system deal robustly and fairly with overload situations? Does efficiency plummet as utilization rises?

Given that the antennae integrated into handhelds are scarcely better than dummy loads, what sort of antenna gain do you need on the access point end to provide plenty of SNR? Consider the radio environment of the venue, given that metal surfaces will cause reflections and raise the noise floor. Also consider that reflections might make it difficult to divide the area into zones served by multiple access points, and devices might hop between points sporadically and quickly due to signal fluctuations.

Are the Laptops Water-Proof?

[osewa77]

I don't understand why the Tablet PCs you provide "for those who don't bring their laptops" would need to be water-proof when the laptops they are intended to replace are not. I think what you need is a solution to water-proof standard laptops. This could simply be an alternative sitting arrangement. Or a big roof over the sitting area.

Google provides the rest of the information you need, of course. And Froogle.

Seun Osewa (Afriguru.com) [afriguru.com]

Re:Are the Laptops Water-Proof?

[DAldredge]

Because people do not take as good care of items they rent as items they own.

Motorola

[$exyNerdie]

I believe that motorola builds a lot of weatherproof ruggerized devices running Windows CE and other pda style operating systems.... I know this because one of my friend works for a fortune 500 company that sells meat and they needed such devices in pig farms!!

psion netpad fits well

[rekrutacja]

it's small, it's ruggadised, it goes wireless, it's programmable. oh, and yes, it's expensive.

http://www.psionteklogix.com/public.aspx?s=com&p =P roducts&pCat=128&pID=1086

Handspring Treo 600

[mbstone]

My Handspring Treo 600 is a pretty good device for doing what you suggest, probably any palm-phone will do. Have you thought about doing a marketing tie-in with a cellular service provider? Get the latest [brand] palmphone [at our special price][on a trial for a day at XYZ ballpark] and use it to get 2 free hot dogs and sodas delivered to your seat.

Maybe your ballpark is already named after a cell phone company.....

here is a better idea

[Anonymous Coward]

roaming waitreses and waiters that use the handheld and key in the orders to be delivered to the seats, deploy on premium seating first. then expand. self serve is cool but sometimes too anoying.

Panasonic Toughbooks are a fit

[Hollinger]

The Panasonic Toughbook might be interesting to you, but, alas, they are expensive.

http://www.panasonic.com/computer/toughbook/home .a sp

Re:Panasonic Toughbooks are a fit

[crass751]

They make a nice PDA line that run WinCE. For full size ruggedized laptops, I swore by my CF-28 at my last job.

Re:Panasonic Toughbooks are a fit

[blugeoned]

Talk about rugged, a friend of mine who sells these things has a picture of one of these that stopped a bullet in Iraq! The bullet was still lodged in it and it booted!

Dear Slashdot; do my job for me, k thx

[Anonymous Coward]

I will tell you exactly what you want to know, for 75% of the fee you're getting. Do the stadium owners know you're a complete idiot?

DIY embedded terminals?

[x00101010x]

I've given some thought to something similar. Low cost, mass produced terminals for public schools to help further electronic textbooks.

First off, I must agree with the idea of ruggedized, waterproof tablets. Laptops can easily be worn out in one season of ham-fisted sports-fans opening, closing, dropping, etc. Also, the spilled beer, weather, etc is a big issue.
What I would include in the spec would be:

1. No external moving parts (ex: laptop screens, swivel antenna, etc)
2. No moving internal parts (ex: harddrives, fans, etc)
3. Touch screen (not tablet, those pens get expensive, a sylus is cheep).
4. Sealed, waterproof. (obvious)
5. Rugged, and oversized (for protection and loss prevention.
6. Wireless, but not specifically 802.11b/g
7. Of course, cheaper the better.

So, the 'no moving parts' bit is part of the ruggedized theory, no hinges to be broken, no prodtruding bits to be snapped off, no harddrives to get nuked from drops, no fans to get clogged or broken (imagine popcorn/catsup all over the fan in your laptop).
Plain old touchscreen beats a tablet because you can touch it with anything. With a tablet you need the special pen, and if you teather it you just violated the first item. Besides, no matter how well you tie it on, it'll get broken off eventually. With a plain touchscreen it can be operated with a finger, or a cheap stylus, or even a regular pen, also your cost drops. On a similar note, it should be in a protective case, and sealed shut. like an oversized version of those rubberized sleaves you can get for iPaqs. This will protect the device, can have an easily replacible window (greasy fingers, sharp pens,random scratches, etc), and with large rubberized edges will reduce the chances of being dropped, lessen the damage when it does happen, and prevent the patrons from hurting themselves.
The protective casing can also help loss prevention by making it too large to slip in a purse or backpack, and can be colored to match the decor of the venue. A friend of mine does something similar with a laser pointer he hands to children to ask questions and point things out at the planitarium he runs.
On the issue of wireless, perhaps it would be cheaper to setup bluetooth access points around each section and have those use 802.11b/g or regular cat5 to link into the network. This reduces the cost per unit as well as increases battery life (you're going to have to recharge these things, and the battery will be the bulk of the weight).
An additional benefit to bluetooth is it's short range, regular access throughout the stadiums, but setup special bluetooth gateways around the exits that will alert security if one of the units is about to leave the venue.

Now here comes the big part. You don't make these things from normal computers running winCE or anything even x86 platform. Set up big servers somewhere safe and put all your processing power there. Make the units run off microcontrollers, running linux or some other free OS, with just enough capability to 1) run the touchscreen (serial or USB HID), the bluetooth, tcp/ip stack, the LCD and some form of terminal software (vnc or a remote X windows session). So then, all the user sessions are running on some beefy servers that can each handle 100 clients running a web browser, or macromedia flash, whatever you're doing the apps in.
Now the clients can easily run off a 16MB CF card using midori-linux + iceWM + rsh (like what i'm running my Compaq IA1 internet appliance on).

So, to summarize, you'd end up with:

1. Micro controller/single board computer (modified ethernut, PC104, etc)
2. Low power consumption/heat output
3. Touchscreen (USB HID or Serial)
4. LCD/OLED screen
5. 16MB CF storage
6. linux + X11 + iceWM + rsh
7. linux servers hosting remote sessions supporting webbrowser/flash/whatever
8. Bluetooth tcp/ip access
9. Bluetooth gateways bridging to cat5/wifi in each section (still cheaper than 802.11b in each unit)
10. Rubberized, protective (device and patron) loss prevention reducing casings
11. and a partridge in a pear tree?

anyways, sorry for the rambling braindump format, i'm done now.

Re:DIY embedded terminals?

[UID1000000]

The range of Bluetooth is only 10 meters compared to approximately 100 meters for a wireless bridge.

Furthermore, I understand that there are a number of things that you can do to extend the range of 802.11 frequencies and bridges but I'm not familar with any to extend Bluetooth.

Re:DIY embedded terminals?

[x00101010x]

I don't know much about bluetooth, but i do know it's cheaper. I would guestimate that you could get over 50 seats covered by one bluetooth-to-wifi bridge (50 seats within the 10 meter radius of the bridge), so that would reduce the number of wifi setups to at least 1/50th of putting them in every unit. That should make up for the cost of having to add the BT-Wifi bridges every 20 meters or so. Additionally, they could be mounted up out of the way of venue patrons which would allow for larger antenna and su

Re:DIY embedded terminals?

[UID1000000]

But you get something like 215 units per 802.11 bridge. Which would equate to longer range and a less units.

What is the speed rating of BT? If you went G on the wifi side you can get 54Mbps but what about BT? I'm sure even 11Mbps with 802.11b is enough for any web based application though.

Re:DIY embedded terminals?

[x00101010x]

I'm imagining the games and interractive content would be similar in bandwidth requirements as mobile phone games. Since they'd be running off CF cards, it wouldn't be too difficult to swap out preloaded content during their charge cycle, or better yet, make the chargers more like cradles, and have an rs232 or even ethernet connections to load new content while charging.
I thing BT should be fast enough. And BT is far cheaper than the 802.11 would be. 50 was a conservative figure, i'm sure there'd be more s

Peer into the future: In too deep!

[UID1000000]

First off, I might be repeating what others have said here but there are a few things to consider, price, prob of damage/theft, ways to track and prevent theft, and programming capabilities.

Here is what I'd say, go with a PDA (PocketPC or Palm) but you'd have to develop some sort of automatic wireless backup software that runs the backup of the softare and data before the battery dies, like at a certain point, 10% of battery left. Otherwise you'd be tired out by constantly reviving and restoring data to th

Palm Tungsten C

[macemoneta]

The Palm Tungsten C [palmone.com] is (relatively) cheap now ($399/retail qty 1) and you can slip them into a ziplock bag (and use them that way, with the thumb-board). It will keep the units clean, protect the screen from scratching, and make it water resistant/spill proof. I do this when I'm working in less than clean/dry conditions.

They have WiFi (including WEP-128, and a VPN client compatible with Poptop [poptop.org]), a graphical SSL web browser, an email client, and can even do SSH2 [sealiesoftware.com]. It's an Xscale 400MHz based PDA, so it may even run Linux some day [linux.org.uk]. :-)

Losses and Damage

[DaRat]

Wouldn't the likelihood for rental unit losses or damage outweigh the potential revenue? A series of distributed stations in the aisles for drink/food orders, sure. But, those rental units are going to have beer spilled on them; they're going to be dropped (a lot); people are going to accidentally drop them in the trash (and forget) them or drop them in the urinal trough and not want to pick them up again. You could make the renters responsible for the replacement cost, but would you rent something if the likelihood of having to shell out $2000 was high?

Sharp zaurus SL-6000

[d^2b]

- integrated wifi
- runs linux, so nobody will steal it :-)
- 1 meter drop tested

I dunno if the gadgets are any good, but you
sound like who sharp had in mind.

I also don't know how water-resistant they are.
FWIW, a random anecdote claimed that they worked
ok after drying out.

But hey, if you wanted something other than random
anecdotes, you wouldn't ask here would you :->

Cool, Free PDA!

[nurb432]

What arena are you going to do this in so i can 'rent' one and walk out the door with it.

Seriously though, how many people bring laptops to games?

This sounds like trying to fill a niche that doesnt really exist...

If you just want 'at your seat ordering', add a tiny keypad to each seat to request a 'clerk' to come see you...

Otterbox.com

[mbrinkm]

A co-worker pointed this website out.

Otterbox.com - Armor PDA Cases [otterbox.com]

These cases look like a good solution to your needs.

Hamilton Tiger Cats?

[codemachine]

You wouldn't happen to be the person researching wi-fi for the CFL's Hamilton Tiger Cats would you?

Or perhaps Bob Young himself? That'd be real cool.

Unfortunately I have no advise on rugged PDAs for you, other than they'd probably be very expensive. With whatever you end up buying, you'll want to do some sort of limited trial first, where there are say only 100-500 available on a first-come first-server basis. Very soon you'll see how rugged they are, and how much demand there is, ,without having too m

kangaroo.tv

[Anonymous Coward]

I just saw this exact at the Long Beach Grand Prix yesterday. They were AMAZING. I couldnt afford to rent them for the $60 something that they were asking, but i really wanted to. This is exactly what you are looking for. Its targeted for a sports audience, and the multimdeia delivery was brilliant. Check it out at

http://www.kangaroo.tv/