One of the goals of OpenKiosk is to present a contained computing
environment to the customer. These environments include the time
customers are allowed to use a kiosk. There are many ways to lock down
customers alloted time. Using prepaid ticket method is one convenient
method.
A prepaid ticket contains a generated serial number that maps to a
database containing the time allowed for a user to use a client
terminal. The algorithm used to generate serial numbers is an
implementation of the Mersenne Twister random number generator.
Customers purchase these tickets in order to use a kiosk or workstation.
Initially, OpenKiosk only supports printed tickets. In the future, smart card access will be implemented. Printing tickets is simple. Select the prepaid access tab in the configuration window. Just choose whether you are limiting your customers according to time or to their money. Enter this choice by selecting a method from the prepaid type and value drop-down menu.
In the settings page, select either hour or minute denominations if you want to limit your customers to hour or minute limits. Then click the generate and print tickets button to generate tickets.
For example to generate 100 pieces of 1-hour prepaid tickets to sell to your customers:
The generated tickets is displayed on a list. Select this group
of tickets and either click the print or print preview buttons on the
upper portion of the dialog. A prepaid ticket look like this:
The upper portion is the network access number. Customers must input this in the openkiosk client. The lower portion is the allotted time limit of the user in a kiosk terminal.
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