While working for LJG Partners I developed a touch screen kiosk for The Irvine Companies brand new 7 star resort, Pelican Hill in Newport Beach. This kiosk is un-like any other. The kiosk consists of 2 separate applications, interacting seamlessly with one another. The first application consists of a full-screen, video juke box touch screen application. The second application consists of a full-screen, 1920x1080, HD video player that is being played on a 64" HDTV.

Pelican Hill utilizes the kiosk in 7 different locations throughout the resort to better serve their guests. For example, guests who arrive are generally unfamiliar with the resort, the various restaurants in and around the resort, golf courses, shopping areas, etc. A guest may be interested in the various dining options in the area. Specifically, the guest wants information on Spanish and Japanese restaurants and after dinner the guest is interested in a spa package. The concierge team will then use the video juke box touch screen application to add the appropriate videos to the video queue system. Once finished, the concierge can then choose to play one video at a time, or play all the videos in the video queue system.

Responsibilities:

  • Sr. Programmer
  • I performed 97% of the programming and development of the touch screen application (Flash/Flex, Actionscript 3, PHP w/PEAR, MySQL, XML), except for the graphic design/UI. The other 3% was done by fellow programmers at LJG Partners in order for me to concentrate on other key modules. They helped with some PHP/MySQL development.
  • Updates

Overview:

  • Flash/Flex, Actionscript 3, PHP, MySQL, XML
  • Both applications are independent, both are in full-screen mode, and both are being shown on separate displays.
  • 8 Custom computers (hardware, case, OS Environment, boot screens, startup, application window placement, etc) were developed for the kiosk. 7 installed, and 1 is being used as a backup.
  • All video data, playlist data, and category data are stored and retrieved via PHP / MySQL / XML

Video Juke Box Features:

  • When choosing one of the 6 main video categories, the main category buttons fade out and a playlist slides onto the canvas from the right hand side. The playlist consists of 8 video sub-categories and their appropriate videos.
  • Once a video sub-category is chosen, the videos contained within the category->sub-category are displayed in the right hand side of the playlist. The playlist is scrollable and imitates an iPhone scroll.
  • Once videos are chosen from the playlist, they are added to a video queue system which in turn is a scrollable thumbnail slider located below the main category buttons
  • You can choose to play one video at a time by pressing on one of the videos' thumbnails in the video queue system. Each video has its own thumbnail.
  • A video may only be added to the video queue system once.
  • You can choose to play all the videos in the video queue system by pressing the play all button.
  • After a video or multiple videos are chosen to be played, the information is relayed on a LocalHost to the video player application.
  • You have the option to save a playlist of queued videos.
  • You have the option to load a saved playlist. If a saved playlist is loaded, and re-saved, a prompt with not appear asking you to enter in a name for which to save your playlist because the application already knows that the playlist was saved once before. It will just automatically save the playlist.
  • You can delete videos from the queue system.
  • You can delete playlists
  • You can clear all the videos from the video queue system and retain your saved playlist.
  • Each video has a title and descriptive text that can be accessed by clicking on the 'i' button.

Video Player:

  • Video format: Quicktime, H.264, 1920x1080
  • The video player continuously loops through a 5 minute looping video until the concierge team decides to play video(s) from the queue system.
  • Once a an XML video playlist has been generated by the touch screen kiosk application by clicking on the play one or play all buttons, the looping video disappears and the playlist will begin to load and play the video(s). The looping video plays after the last video in the generated XML playlist has been played.
  • If the concierge presses the 'i' button to access the current playing videos' information the video is paused, and an opaque information drawer slides over the video and displays the appropriate video title and descriptive text.
  • If the concierge presses the 'i' button while the information drawer is opened, the information drawer will disappear to the left and the video will resuming playing from its paused position.