JavaOne Kiosks 2012

The idea was to show Java SE Embedded and JavaFX running on a small embedded device as a Kiosk with a great UI to help people plan their JavaOne schedule. One was shown in the Technical Keynote and the 4 production ones were then placed in the Hilton, Parc 55 and Nikko hotels of JavaOne. This is the story of how they were made…

It is normal for the month or so before JavaOne to be filled with demo building fun but up until now that had only included software development and visual design. This year we had been working with small embedded devices such as the Beagle XM, Panda ES and Raspberry Pi. As cool as they are they come as bare board which is neither practical or compelling for demos. So this year I took on the challenge of designing and building the hardware for the demo as well as software and visual design. We already had the idea of using the JavaOne schedule data set for a demo and the crazy idea of building kiosks popped up one time when we were chatting about how to use the data.

So I started in Photoshop designing the user interface for the application. Once I had a basic idea of the look I jumped into code and got a early version up and running on desktop. We already had a 22? 3M touch screen from our 2010 JavaOne demo so we hooked that up to a Beagle XM and started getting the application to work on there. This took many rounds as the JavaFX Embedded port was very young when we started. So developing this app we helped test, debug and tune the port. Here is a pic of the very first designs, some of you may spot what stayed and what changed:

Video of on Stage at Keynote

Secret iPad Version

We built a optimized a version of the scheduler for iPad, unfortunatly we were stoped at the last minute from releasing the iOS version of JavaFX so this cool app never saw the light of day 🙁

Making Of Photos

I designed all the hardware, we got the main sections laser cut. The legs were made of MDF painted with white automotive paint and wrapped with two layers of acrylic with logos laser cut. The base was laser cut 1/4 steel that was painted with the same automotive paint. An amazing colleague of mine Joe Macglen who has the ultimate workshop was kind enough to help sandblast the steel bases and do the painting.