Just curious to know what folks are using for their kids and event check-in solutions. I expect most of us are using ChMS of some kind but what about the device used? PC, Tablet, VDI, etc. Also share your success and challenges. I will start
We use CCB and low end older pc’s loaded with Win7 Enterprise. It works well, rarely gives us fits. Thought about just purchasing SSD’s for them and keep using as they get slower. Will be testing VDI on one of them.
How about the rest of you?
We use FellowShipOne Check-In on older PCs running Windows7 Professional with touchscreen monitors. They are bound to our Domain and the checkin user account is severely locked down through AD.
They rarely have issues. Most of our issues are because of Comcast… 
We use FellowshipOne Check-in as well. We originally purchased SeePoint touchscreen kiosks and we had a few Tangent as well. They worked well for years (some 5-7 years) but recently many have failed.
I didn’t like the fact that we had to pack the Tangents and SeePoints up and ship them offsite for repair, which could be a 2 week turnaround while they were in warranty.
We started purchasing (From iT1 Source) HP PROONE 400 G2 All-In-One computers.
HP offers a 3-year Next Business Day onsite warranty on them.
We have a heavy deployment of Self-Check in kiosks (about 20) throughout) our main campus, and 4 assisted stations that are manned with volunteers.
The HP’s do not come with the barcode scanner so we had to order those separately and have our maintenance team ‘retro-fit’ them onto the units. They have a template now and can mount those relatively quickly for us now but it was a bit of a pain when we first started ordering these unit.
We saved a ton of money as the last Tangent Quote we received was about $2600 and we get the HP’s for less than $1000.
Check that, the Tangent quote was $1300 each but we get the HP’s for closer to $850 or so. We save roughly $500 a unit with the HP’s and they come onsite to repair during the 3 year warranty period.
The HP PROONE 400 G2 21.5 inch touchscreen All-in-One’s are actually less than $700 from iT1 source.
So we basically get 2 machines for the price of 1 Tangent.
Our ChMS is Arena. We use old desktop PC’s running Windows 7, domain joined. We added new touchscreen monitors and USB wifi devices. I probably should be looking for something to replace them. The HP All-in-ones look like a good possibility…
We use Ministry Platform.
We use a point of sale all in one terminal. EVO TP4-POS-X. EVO-TP4C-34UN 15- Evo Tp4 Pro Truflat, I3 3.3Dc, 4Gb, 60Gb Ssd, No Os, around $1200. Wall mounted cables in box behind or in tree trunk below (see pics)
Zebra GX420 DT USB Serial Ethernet Cutter US. The Zebra were more expensive that prior Dymo, but we paid for them with label cost savings and they are significantly faster. We were able to check in 1500 in 15 minute period for VBX last summer with 10 kiosks.
CCB, Windows 7 pro, domain joined, remote locked down profile and internet filtered whitelist.
Lenovo towers (local church member has great prices), ELO touchscreens, Zebra label printers (no cutters) & honeywell omnidirectional barcode readers. Almost all of ours are manned stations. Recently we have found someone in Georgia to refurb the touchscreens. The Zebra printers are more expensive but last several years. I have some that are 10 years old.
We do have 13 Dell all in one touchscreen computers. These are ok, but Wake on LAN does not work with these. This is a problem for us. We like to wake up remote units & run updates at night. Will look at Lenovo all in ones in the future.
Since some of our units are only used once a week I still have a few slooooowww Windows XP boxes (stop laughing)…
We were using ACS and HP all-in-one touchscreens for several years but recently upgraded to Planning Center Check-Ins and Android tablets. We love it! We can still use our old touchscreen PC’s but the tablet options and wireless printing are amazing!
The tablets have built-in cameras for barcode reading and they can print directly to wireless label printers or wirelessly to a computer hooked up to a label printer. It has been a massive improvement over our old system and adding a new kiosk costs less than $100.
We also use tablets for roster check in through Planning Center Groups as well.
We use Arena and have built our own kiosks using B stock Surface touch screens. I’ve written an article on it. Here is a link to the PDF. Here is a link to the article with hardware specs.
F1, Wyse VDI Zero Clients, XenDesktop Server + small flash accelerated SAN. Pooled-Image machines, daily reset from golden-master. Zebra GX and GK printers.
This was a costly way to do it, but has worked exceptionally well for us (twenty something stations over 5 years we have only had three or four weekends with even a single kiosk out of commission. Additionally, we have had mobile iPad checkin for ~5 years as well.
While it has been incredibly stable, this build is getting old now (installed about 5 years ago). I have 3 new-style F1 kiosks in operation right now, with just an iPad + ZQ500 Zebra printers. I like this new style a lot more from a cost perspective and I hope to shift over to it over the next year.
Karl P
We initially purchased Dell Latitudes coming off lease, running Win 7 Pro. They work fine, very little problems. As we replace older Win7 staff laptops, the old ones will get moved to check-in.
We are migrating from Logos II to CCB, and will use Chromebooks for check in that does not require label printing, the Win 7 laptops for checkin that does need labels.
We’re on F1 and have started deploying ipad mini 2s for check in. Have successfully deployed Zebra Gx420ds using Presto. It’s got some quirks with how you have to set the settings of the Zebras on the print server, but we’ve gotten it fairly stable. I’ll be setting up self check in stations using the ipads here in the next two weeks. We’ve traditionally used PC desktops with Elo touch displays, but most of these units are coming to end of life and a $260 ipad that includes the bar code scanner and that can be tied into our MDM for running in single app mode and tracking their locations makes it too good of a cost savings to keep going the PC route.
Can you give us a link to the iPads with bar code scanner? What MDM are you using for how many devices?
The ipads just use the built in camera to read the barcode. We use Meraki MDM. It’s fantastic. Had 2 ipads get stolen a few months ago and I’ve already recovered one and we we know where the other one is as well.
The key to the MDM is using Apple’s DEP program. That way no matter what happens, you always have control over the ipad/iphone/or mac. You have to purchase directly from apple and they can’t be referb. But for the extra cost, it’s worth it.
