Sprocket recently assisted our key client Earl Brandspace with the Nikon Australia stand at the recent Melbourne Digital Show, held at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre. We love photography here at Sprocket, and it was great to see the marriage of an Australian designed product with a company the stature of Nikon. Nikon had prepared a dedicated iPad application for the event to promote the recent release of the Nikon 1 series. Naturally Earl Brandspace needed a smart looking and secure enclosure for their iPads. We were delighted to help. The Nikon stand was the easily the largest and most impressive at the show. It was an impressive event and look forward to working with them again soon.
The Launchpad iPad Handheld is the ideal way to securely house your iPad and yet allow it to be picked up and used for a wide variety of applications from restaurants and exhibitions to trade shows and museums. Secured by a stainless steel tether and cushioned from the odd accidental drop, the Launchpad handheld has demonstrated its effectiveness from Melbourne to Manilla!Available with either hide or show home button and featuring an optional power adaptor for fast and easy charging, the Launchpad Handheld iPad case is the enclosure of choice for iPads on the go.
Posted by mark | Posted in LaunchPad, Windows | Posted on 23-04-2012
After many months in the planning and execution, Sprocket has released its highly anticipated PC tablet enclosure based around Acer’s Windows based Iconia product.
The Acer powered Launchpad is a key component of Sprocket’s drive towards the development of the ultimate micro kiosk solution utilising the open platform Windows interface to enable enterprise software deployment and plug and play communication with peripheral devices.
In addition to Sprocket’s innovative design and award winning technology, the Acer Launchpad solution is feature packed including a quick release multi point key lock system and optional external power button access.
The system allows for USB and optional ethernet connection and like all launchpads can be wall, desk or floor mounted in portrait or landscape mode, a truly versatile and powerful retail tool all at a fraction of the cost of a full size kiosk with the same size punch!
Contact us today for an obligation free demonstration.
Ian Wong, that intrepid industrial designer of renown, continues his passionate determination to educate the wider public on the history of Australian design has created a fabulous historical haven of orange Aussie design. Move over Orange People this exhibition is a joyous celebration of product design that works so well I am going out to buy something orange.
Sprocket supplied a Launchpad to secure Ian’s iPad allowing visitors to the Gallery to browse his blog and peruse items not on display [and almost all the items are from Ian's extensive private collection of design classics].
The Orange exhibition is showing October 6th – 28th
Design Gallery
10am-4pm Monday-Friday
Design Institute of Australia
Level 1 – 175 Collins Street, Melbourne
The Art Gallery of NSW is using Sprocket’s Launchpads in their interactive gallery to securely house iPads as part of their Contemporary Art Zone.The Contemporary Art app was developed in house by the Gallery’s IT and design team and is aimed at encouraging visitors to explore a selection of artists and artwork from the contemporary art collection at the Gallery through browsing the app in the Launchpad enclosure.
Retailers, exhibitors, galleries, museums now have another iPad enclosure option with the release by Sprocket of its all new totally clear Launchpad secure iPad kiosk.
Listening to its customers the Sprocket design team has worked hard to precision engineer this brand new innovation enabling the fabulous Apple iPad to be seen in all its form and beauty yet fully protected from unauthorised use or theft in a public environment.
Definitely for those who want to show off what they have got..safely and securely. Orders are now being taken for mid November delivery!
A Melbourne Videographer contacted sprocket to assist in a project for the Geelong Gallery. Ryan O’Hehir needed an small, robust ipad enclosure to play video documentaries of local artists at an exhibition at the Geelong Galley. The project called for looped video and audio to be played from a wallmount LaunchPad. In this instance Ryan decided to connect headphones to the LaunchPad to create a ‘listening post’ so that gallery visitors could hear the audio without distracting other gallery patrons.
LaunchPad is ideally suited to this purpose; it is discreet, strong and stylish.
At the recent Food and Wine Show in Melbourne, Fisher and Paykel, the market leader in the design of innovative household appliances, chose Sprocket”s Launchpad iPad kiosks to highlight their new product range. The Launchpad was selected because of it”s elegant yet robust design that perfectly complemented Fisher and Paykel”s sleek product range and provided visitors to the stand with a truly personal retail shopping experience.
Sprocket has delivered a new lauchpad to ‘Chess kids’, an organistion dedicated to the popularisation ?of chess as an educational and recreational pursuit for children. Founded in 1997 by David Cordover, Chess Kids worked with 645 schools last year and is the largest chess organisation of any kind in Australia. Sprocket collaborated with David to brand and configure a Freestanding Kiosk for his in-school presentations. The system displays the ‘Chess kids’ own hosted software that is accessed via our PadLock secure browser.
This system tracks and displays the scores of multiple players in chess tournaments. Each time a game is concluded the player enters his result and this can be tracked in real time on the internet. Potentially several LaunchPads configured this way and be placed at a tournament, allowing participants to enter their results quickly at any kiosk. Sprocket went along to observe a tournament at a Victorian Primary school. What was striking was the speed which the school kids worked with the software and hardware. There was no hesitation to interact with LaunchPad; the kids enthusiastically embracing the this new method of chess play.
Sprocket and LaunchPad had a significant presence at the Australian International Motor Show. The LaunchPad iPad kiosk is ideally suited to exhibitions. Companies can feature their own content or run application to perform specific tasks. At this exhibition the iPad LaunchPad Kiosk assisted in helping 6 major car manufactures to deliver their marketing message on over 35 individual LaunchPads. Featured heavily on the Nissan, Mazda, Hyundai, Suzuki and Better Place Australia stands Launchpad integrated seamlessly into these companies overall stand designs.
On the Better Place Australia display sprocket was commissioned to develop software specifically for the event. This software collected valuable marketing information for the company.
Sprocket and Omnecom have recently teamed with Hog’s Breath Cafes at Noosa and Mooloolaba on Australia’s stunning Sunshine Coast to fast track their customer loyalty program right in store where it counts. Using Sprocket’s LaunchPad iPad kiosk solution, Omnecom deployed the Chimpadeedoo mail App with custom graphics to enable customers to sign up for special offers at the point of purchase. The system is so simple and intuitive that it takes no more than a minute to register your name and email address to receive free dining vouchers and other offers on a regular basis.
Phil McKercher, CEO of Omnecom said ” this system empowers the Hog’s Breath franchisee to engage with the customer using the latest technology, provide great value directly to that customer and at the same time building a growing data base of regular clientele, the value of which cannot be underestimated.”
The key to the success of the deployment of the system is Sprocket’s secure and robust LaunchPad enclosures that deliver the message to the customer in an engaging and visually appealing form.
We are not talking about the limited offerings of Motorola or Symbol scanning devices euphemistically termed micro kiosks but fully featured, content rich interactive systems that provide a wide range of customer functions including transactions and are powered by iPad type devices.
Why “iPad type” well, whilst we at Sprocket are certainly avid followers of the Apple train the reality is that most of our clients in the corporate world are PC driven. Swapping platforms to a somewhat restricted OS for an enterprise based micro kiosk solution may prove a bridge too far for many. Add to that the flexibility of peripheral connectivity [at least in a Win 7 world] and the iPad 2 in all its beauty and simplicity may be overrun by the dark side, well at least in some volume critical deployments. We love the new size, weight and cameras of the iPad 2 and for some applications we will take full advantage of these features and the LaunchPad Mk 2 about to be released [see next post] will be no exception!
Our R&D team are working behind securely closed doors to develop the latest in Micro Kiosks so what this blog for latest goss.
Launchpad Mk2
Apple never rests and neither do we! We are about to receive shipment of our updated LaunchPad bristling with new and improved features, many of which came from our many customers and some of course from our hard working design team! A sneak preview will show you that we have added greater flexibility to the fixing of the LaunchPad to desktops and walls; added anti rotation lugs to give even greater protection against damage and developed an optional anti-cutting protection sleeve for the highest level of security. All in all we are very excited with the Mk 2 and even more so when we start shipping them in a few weeks from now.
There are numerous reasons for looking at the iPad as an alternative Micro kiosk?device to traditional pc powered kiosks and one of the primary reasons must be the benefit to the environment.
Greenpeace and others have mounted an environmental argument against the iPad and its various clones but this has less to do with the device itself and more to do with the increased reliance on, and use of, the energy hungry computing cloud centres to communicate with these mobile devices.
What is indisputable however is the green credentials of the iPad manufacture itself when one looks at it’s low embodied energy, material efficiency, minimal use of hazardous substances and recycling strategy. It is simply a leaner device when it comes down to manufacturing credentials compared to incumbent public interactive technologies.
That leaves us with the question of the efficient use of energy during the life of the product and in particular the comparison with current technologies using larger format LCDs, touchscreens and computers in kiosk enclosures. In basic energy terms the iPad in normal operation consumes around 4 watts per hour whilst the traditional kiosk rates at around 150 watts per hour. Over a year of operating 10 hours a day 7 days per week that can equate to an energy saving of 520,000 watts or 520kwh per kiosk which adds up significantly over a deployment of 100 kiosks.
It is hard to mount an argument against the micro kiosk on environmental grounds and add to that the numerous other deployment benefits, it is no wonder the excitement is building.
Sprocket has recently supplied Its iPad launchPad kiosks to a novel new business in Sydney selling oxygen to shoppers.
The O2 Bar at Darling Harbour’s Harbourside precinct offers 90 per cent-pure flavored oxygen for $1 a minute for up to 15 minutes. Popular overseas the 02 bar is the first of its kind in Australia. Arranged in an array for customers the Lauchpad Micro Kiosks allow patrons to browse while imbibing. LaunchPad has been used by many businesses in many industries, but this is the first time we’ve helped a company to sell air! See the fairfax article here.
The LaunchPad ipad enclosure was used by several car exhibitors at the recent Melbourne motor show. In fact it was the most popular information kiosk at the event! Toyota, suzuki, Mazda, Nissan and Better Place had a variety of our launchPads configurations on show. Some LaunchPads were running websites or customs apps, and in the case of Better Place an application built by us for them especially for the event. Check out the video to see LaunchPad in action.
