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How-to Make A Captive Portal

Last year we designed a captive portal implementation for Heist, an experimental project that used Open Exhibits, GestureWorks, and Sensus server technology to enable effortless networking. The system allowed digital museum objects to be heisted from the exhibit using a mobile device.

Heist used a WiFi captive portal; as museum visitors connected to the network they were pushed an HTML 5 application. They simply added their name, chose a color and their personal avatar appeared on the table.

Heist has been abandoned in pursuit of other projects; however, it continues to receive attention. We often get asked how we designed the captive portal. Rather than have our notes sit in a dusty storage cabinet, we’re offering them to the Open Exhibits community. You’ll have to excuse the rough draft document; it was never meant to be a formal guide. Nevertheless we think some people will find it useful. 

See the Heist research page for more information and a link to the document:
/openexhibits/research/heist/