New Public Internet Terminal (Hotmouse.net)

hw40

hw40

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I would like to know what forum members think of this concept. www.hotmouse.net I developed it over the last 15 months and now I'm testing the waters to see what the best way would be to introduce it to the market.

What challenges do you see for a concept like this to take hold, especially in rural, under-serviced areas?
 
Very cool indeed.
The 400W PSU seems slightly large though. What CPU setup is in there? Is it fully setup PC in there or did you use a embedded board type? I'd think an embedded board would have far less power requirements and less prone to thieving desires. :)
 
I used standard PC components, for easy maintenance in remote areas. I went with a big power supply for redundancy purposes (if that makes sense)

For the prototype, I just bought a basic board and processor. I'm still not sure what would be the best board (ATX micro) and processor for this.. still researching this.. My criteria would be good heat resistance, affordability.. not the latest and greatest (it just needs to be able to run Firefox comfortably with 1GB RAM)

Any suggestions in this regard are most welcome.
 
Yeah, single power supply doesn't make sense for redundancy.

Considering the environments it'd be in, I'd try and find something small and affordable that did not need a active cooling solution. Last thing you'd probably want is the CPU cooking itself thanks to dust and fluff packing up the heatsink/fan.

Low powered Atom-based board perhaps?
 
POTUS "That looks exactly like the public Internet terminal I used in 2004 in Heathrow's Terminal 3. ;)"

And your point is? Are you implying that I copied my design from somewhere?

Sure, it's not a new concept to have a robust public internet terminal, I've seen quite a few myself, but I think this one has some unique features, that I have not come across during my research, including:

- It's designed for Africa, not for Heathrow
- Running from a memory stick
- Integration with a mature billing system

I welcome any inputs to make it a better product!
 
does the terminal have any usb ports available for users to save info on flash disks while browsing the net?
 
Last edited:
hw40 said:
POTUS "That looks exactly like the public Internet terminal I used in 2004 in Heathrow's Terminal 3. ;)"

And your point is? Are you implying that I copied my design from somewhere?

Sure, it's not a new concept to have a robust public internet terminal, I've seen quite a few myself, but I think this one has some unique features, that I have not come across during my research, including:

- It's designed for Africa, not for Heathrow
- Running from a memory stick
- Integration with a mature billing system

I welcome any inputs to make it a better product!
Click to expand...

These terminals exist in many other countries already. In germany for e.g for more than 8,9 years already.

Maybe you can browse through their sites and see what hardware they are using.

I think I have not spotted one of those babies in SA yet. Great Idea I think. Keep the good work up ;)
 
blogbytes said:
These terminals exist in many other countries already. In germany for e.g for more than 8,9 years already.

Maybe you can browse through their sites and see what hardware they are using.

I think I have not spotted one of those babies in SA yet. Great Idea I think. Keep the good work up ;)
Click to expand...

Thank you, I will have a look! :)

www.hotmouse.net
 
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