MERIDIAN mzero DirectMe Software User Guide

: June 13, 2024
: MERIDIAN

Table of Contents

MERIDIAN mzero DirectMe Softwaremzero DirectMe Software
Product Information
Product Usage Instructions
Basic Conﬁguration Checking
Login to Mzero Server for Kiosk Management
Change the attract screen and URL using the MzeroManage account
- Change the URL for DirectMe (with maps)
Change the attract screens and URL manually
Editing Directory Content
Creating and Branding a new Cemetery
QR codes and the Mobile Web View
FAQs
Documents / Resources

MERIDIAN mzero DirectMe Softwaremzero DirectMe Software

MERIDIAN-mzero-DirectMe-Softwaremzero-DirectMe-Software-
PRODUCT

Product Information

The product is called DirectMe and it is a kiosk software developed by Meridian. It is designed to provide interactive self-service capabilities for users. The software includes features such as a secure browser, attract screen customization, kiosk health monitoring, and kiosk management through the MzeroManage server.

Product Usage Instructions

Basic Configuration Checking

Power on the kiosk with the door closed.
The Meridian Secure Browser software will start automatically and the attract screen will show.

Maintenance and Exit

After successfully entering the password, you will see the maintenance screen.
Click on the “Exit to Desktop” button to exit the kiosk Windows desktop.

Switching to Production Mode and Restart

Close the door.
Double click on the Production desktop icon and wait for the confirmation message.
Press any key to exit the window and then restart the kiosk by clicking on the Reboot icon on the desktop or using the Windows restart function.

Login to Mzero Server for Kiosk Management

Note: This section only applies to customers who have purchased the Mzero Manage subscription.

Connect to the MzeroManage server at www.mzeronet.com.
Enter your user name and password to login.
The main interface will appear with four separate panels and a tab slider across the top.

Kiosk Health and Usage Monitoring

Click on the “Check Kiosk Health” link to view the status of all available kiosks.
Click on the “Reports” tab, then select “Today Usage Details” to view the corresponding report.
If you need further help with the general usage of the My Kiosks server, press the “Support” button on the upper right corner of the main screen to submit a ticket.

Change Attract Screen and URL using MzeroManage Account

Login to your My Kiosks account.
Click on the “Create Attract Loop” link in the dashboard or go to the “Configuration” tab and click on the “Create Attract Loop” link.
Give a name and description (optional) to the attract loop Adjust the duration of display and transition time between images.
Browse for the images to be added to the attract loop and click “Add”.
Add all necessary images.
Preview the attract loop in a new window by clicking on the “Preview” button.
To delete images from the attract loop, check the checkbox before each image and click the “Delete Checked” button.

Introduction: User Manual

Welcome to the Meridian DirectMe software. Follow the instructions in the manual to operate and manage content for your directory kiosk. This manual contains simple instructions to get your
self-service device running quickly. You will ﬁnd useful tips and answers to key questions for your unit. We recommend that you use this manual as a resource when resolving any issues.
This document and others are available online to registered clients. For additional inquires on products and accessories for your kiosks contact your Meridian sales representative.

Basic Conﬁguration Checking

Step 1: Power ON

Power on the kiosk with the door closed.
Meridian Secure Browser software will start automatically and then the attract screen will show.

Step 2: Exiting the Software to the Windows Desktop

Touch the top left corner ﬁrst then the top right corner hidden areas on the screen or press down “mze” three characters together (MAP version 3.8.5 and above) while the attract screen page is being displayed. Note the kiosk must be displaying the attract loop and not browsing a web page for this exit procedure to respond. If browsing a web page you will need to wait unit the browsing session times out and it exits back to the attract loop images before proceeding to exit via the Log-in screen.
The operator login screen shown in Figure 1 will appear.
Enter the operator password (7777) on the screen, then press “LOG-IN”
- MzeroDirectMe Software Guide
After successfully entering the password, you should see the maintenance screen (see Figure 2)
Click on the “Exit to Desktop” button to exit the kiosk Windows desktop.

Step 3 : Switching to the Production Mode and Restart

Close the door.
Double click on the “Production” desktop icon and wait for the conﬁrmation message (see Figure 3). Press any key to exit this window and then restart the kiosk by clicking on the “Reboot” icon on the desktop, or by using the Windows restart function to restart the kiosk.

NOTE: THIS SECTION ONLY APPLIES TO CUSTOMERS WHO HAVE PURCHASED THE MZERO MANAGE SUBSCRIPTION.

1. Connect to MzeroManage server at www.mzeronet.com. Enter your user name and password to login (see Figure 4).
After logging in, the main interface will appear with four separate panels and a tab slider across the top. See Figure 5.
- From this dashboard, click on the “Check Kiosk Health” link (see Figure 6).
- The status of all the available kiosks will be shown. In this same page the links on the left side can be used to check the kiosk(s) connection.
Click on the “Reports” tab, then select “Today Usage Details.” The corresponding report is shown below in Figure 7.
If you need further help with the general usage of the My Kiosks server, please press the “Support” button on the upper right corner of the main screen to submit a ticket.

Change the attract screen and URL using the MzeroManage account

Change the attract screen using a ﬂash ﬁle or jpeg images
After you login to you’re my-kiosk account, click Create Attract Loop link in dashboard or click Conﬁguration tab, then click Create Attract Loop link (see Figure 8).

Give a name and description (optional) to the attract loop. The duration of display of each image and the time for transition between images can also be changed here. Click “Create.”
Click “Browse” button and browse for the images to be added to the attract loop. See Figure 9.
Click on “Add” to add the image to the attract loop.
Browse and add all the necessary images.
The attract loop can be previewed in a new window by clicking on the “Preview” button.
Clicking the checkbox before each image and clicking the “Delete Checked” button will delete the selected images from the loop.
When using a ﬂash ﬁle as the attract loop only one ﬁle should be added using the same procedure as above. Click “Next” to continue.
To select the kiosk to kiosks to which the attract loop is to be displayed, click on the check box beside the kiosk name and then click the “Deploy to Selected Kiosk” button (Figure 10).

This takes you to the conﬁrmation page showing the kiosk or kiosks to which the attract loop is to be deployed. Click the “Conﬁrm” button to conﬁrm the update.

Change the URL for DirectMe (with maps)

Your Kiosk is conﬁgured with a URL for displaying Direct Me content. This should not be changed. If for some reason it has changed please log into your MzeroManage account click Conﬁgure Home Page link in dashboard or click Conﬁguration tab, then click Conﬁgure Home Page link. Change the URL to http://local.host:3000/web/index.html by typing in the text box.. Click Deploy button (see Figure 11).
Select the kiosk or kiosks to which the URL is to be deployed and click the “Deploy to Selected Kiosks” button (Figure 12).
Click “Conﬁrm” button to conﬁrm the deployment (Figure 13).
The new URL will then be deployed to the kiosk(s).

Change the attract screens and URL manually

If your kiosk operates oﬄine, you must update the attract screens manually.

Change the default attract screen manually Using Jpeg ﬁles

Stop the MAP kiosk application and exit to desktop.
Locate the ﬁle attract_main.xml which is in c:\kingnet\data\custom\custom2 folder, and open it with any text editor.
Change the image names in this ﬁle (be careful, case sensitive).
Copy your new image ﬁles into c:\kingnet\data\custom\custom2\attractmain folder.
Restart the MAP kiosk application again.

Change the default URL manually

The home page was set by default in the factory. If you need to restore this setting, for Direct Me, the home URL is edited in the internet.xml ﬁle as per the following path:
c:\kingnet\data\custom\custom2\internet.xml
<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
[ **http://local.host:3000/web/index.html **](http://local.host:3000/web/index.html)

Editing Directory Content

Your kiosk is conﬁgured to accept content updates locally via USB drive. To author data, you have been issued a login to the website https://directory.mzero.com.
Log into directory.mzero.com
Open a browser to http://directory.mzero.com
Enter your supplied user name and password and select Sign Me In

Create a new Proﬁle

Open the Menu (1)
Expand Projects (2) and click Add New Project
Enter a project name (3) and skip the reset of the options on the page (leave as default)
Press Save (4)

Structure of the Data

The data is structured by Buildings (of which there could be one or more), then by Companies within the building (one or more) and Persons within the companies.

Relationship between Building and Companies in the Map

The map that Meridian has provided you has landmarks for each building and company you enter that are currently on your map.
Meridian will provide speciﬁc instructions on how to name your buildings and companies to match the landmarks stored in your map.

QR Codes and Limitations

Embedding the information into the QR code, when scanned by and internet connected mobile phone the QR Code’s details are passed along to a website https://directme.meridiankiosks.com as variables. It will then display the map and move the map’s landmark to the pointer that matched the scanned item code that was passed along to the site at the time of scan. This allows the kiosk to operate oﬄine Limitations
The total data transfer to generate the qrcode can’t exceed 225 characters including the name description. I saw one case in the database where they had a really long name and a really long description and the QR code couldn’t be generated but AFAIK it’s only going to be a very small percentage of cases, if not, only one case. This can be rectiﬁed by editing the data to make a shorter description. The case in question had an unusually long description in the burial record.
The user’s mobile phone must be internet connected and a fairly recent browser. I’ve veriﬁed in safari and chrome. May not work in older phones.
It’s diﬃcult to anticipate how the display of the site will work on all screen formats but i tested on a variety of layouts including iphone 5 through to iphone X+ and ipad. As well as a variety of samsung models.
Generally the mobile view has to be kept portrait oriented or only the map will show not the details.

Updating the Kiosk

Insert the USB drive with the update into the koisk’s USB. The software will detect the update within 2 minutes then display a message Updating.

When update succeeds

Wait for the message “USB Update Succeeded” then promptly remove the USB drive from the computer by unplugging it. (see ﬁgure on the right) The computer will restart by itself to apply the update.

If the update is not detected

Make sure the directory ﬁle on the USB drive is saved to the root and called directory.db. The software only looks for USB devices on drives d:\directory.db through i:\update.db.

If the update fails

If the update fails, the directory.db was found but the integrity check veriﬁcation step failed. The ﬁle could be invalid or it may be an empty directory with no buildings, companies or persons (requires at least one of each). Export another sqlite database again and save it to the drive.

The computer keeps applying updates continuously

This may occur if you leave your USB drive plugged in after the update was processed instead of removing the USB drive when instructed.

Creating and Branding a new Cemetery

Replace New Target Map

On the Direct Me (With Maps) kiosks, exit to the desktop using the exit to desktop procedures documented in section 1 Step 2.
hit click on the App icon to get the installation path.
c) Go to that location, where you will ﬁnd the “dist_unpacked” folder.
d ) Navigate to C:\Users\mzeroAdmin\AppData\Local\Programs\mzero-directme\dist_unpacked\web\ maps\oakland and and replace the map images, below are the sizes of main and thumbnail images:
a. Big Image format is in .PNG [8000 X 3400]
b. Thumbnail Image format is in .PNG [3880 X 1606

Delete Existing CSV to reset the map points:

a ) Navigate to C:\Users\mzeroAdmin\AppData\Local\Programs\mzero-directme\dist_unpacked\web\oakland_points.csv
b ) Open this “oakland_points.csv” in the text editor and delete the content (please DO-NOT delete the headers) and save.

Replacing Logo:

a. Navigate to C:\Users\mzeroAdmin\AppData\Local\Programs\mzero-directme\dist_unpacked\web\images
b. Replace logo “SacCity.png” [464X156].

Admin Login (On-Kiosk Editor):

a. Click on the Hamburger button at the top right of the screen.
b. It will prompt for admin password, enter “123456”. Hit Login button, you will be moved to map edit mode.
c. Double click on any location (you wish to add/update/delete) on the map. Note that we highly recommend attaching a mouse to the PC while editing, it is diﬃcult to accurately double-touch on the touch screen so editing will be a lot better with a mouse, when complete editing you can revert to touch screen use.

Add Location:

a. After clicking on the point, user would be shown a pop-up auto populated with X and Y points, he would be given edit ﬁelds to enter Section and plot in it. He need to enter Block/Section/Plot information and click on submit.
b. If the Block and section he is trying to enter is new, the system will make an entry of this location in CSV, else if it is already there, user will see pop-up saying location already exist in system.

Update Location:

a. If location already exist, user can edit the coordinates of that location. Last ﬁeld in the pop up is a drop down to choose “update” operation.
b. Select “update” option and click on submit, the location will have this new x,y coordinates.

Delete Location:

a. If a user wishes to delete any unwanted or wrongly marked point, he has to hover over to the point to get the Section / plot and double click on it, enter the section/plot in the pop up.
b. From drop down (last ﬁeld), select the “delete” option and submit, it will delete the location.

Move out of Edit/Admin Mode:

a. Click on Top right Label “Admin Logout”, and you will be logged out of edit mode, all the markers will be removed and normal user can access the application.

QR codes and the Mobile Web View

The QR codes link to websites when you are viewing on the cemetery kiosk app. The QR code brings you to a speciﬁc website with the same content as what’s on the kiosk. There is a some publication steps required for this function to work. You must also host the website somewhere on the internet on a publicly accessible address.

When you log into the administrator account you have two options logout and download zip. Download zip publishes to a designation folder of your USB jump drive .
When you press download zip it will create a folder on “websitecode” folder on the ﬁrst logical jumpdrive disk or the C:\ drive whichever is ﬁrst.
It creates a folder on your jump drive attached called “websitecode”, it save the the folder on the ﬁrst external drive letter it founds, D, E, F, G or ﬁnally C:\websitecode if no external drive was detected when downloading.
This code can then be published on a hosted wordpress site by uploading the folder. Inside the website code is an index.html and this would be the landing page. In order for the QR code to browse to the index.html that you uploaded to your website host you need to modify the QR code’s base URL to reference the index.html
The URL is set in C:\Users\meroadmin\AppData\Local\Programs\mzero-directme\dist_unpacked\web\conﬁgure.json
Under the conﬁgure.json ﬁle i have added below key : “orgname”: “oaklandcemetery”, “adminpassword”: “123456”, “baseurl”: “ https://example.com/hostedcemetery/”
Set the base URL for the barcode by.
https://example.com/hostedcemetery/ /index.html
When the QR code is generated it will link to that URL.

FAQs

Question	Answer

Who do you contact

if you have lost your MzeroManage

| See the following chapters: Contact Meridian Support Help Desk
account login|
information or would|
like to subscribe to|
this service?|
How do you update the attract screens| Section 3: Change the attract screen and URL using the my-kiosk…
using the mykiosk|
account?|
What kind of content can be run in the attract screen loop?| Currently JPEG Images if you update manually. If you are an MzeroManage subscriber, you may also upload mp4 videos.
Will a ﬂash ﬁle run in|
the attract loop?|
What do I do when I click the attract| Section 3: Change the attract screen and URL using the MzeroManage
screen, the Direct Me|
maps page no longer|
displays?|
If I don’t have a mzeromanage account how do I change the kiosk attract screens locally at the kiosk?| Section 4: Change the attract screens and URL manually
---|---
If I don’t have a mzeromanage account how do I change the kiosk URL address that the kiosk browses locally at the kiosk?| Section 4: Change the attract screens and URL manually
Question| Answer
---|---
How can I get status on the kiosk state of health from the mzeromanage account?| Section 2: Login to MzeroManage Server
How can I get kiosk usage reports from the mzero account?| Section 2: Login to MzeroManage Server
The kiosk is not online with the mykiosk account what do I check?| 1. Check the internet connection

2. Check the MzeroManage account setup on the kiosk

3. Check if MzeroManage software is running on the kiosk

How do I exit the Mzero DirectMe software to get to the Windows desktop on the kiosk?| Section 1: Basic Conﬁguration Checking
Question| Answer
---|---
How to change the inactivity timeout default setting of 30 seconds?| From the Windows desktop of the kiosk navigate to:

c:\kingnet\kingnetsettings.ini [Gui]

InactivityTimeout=30

How to remove the MAP Secure software?| ➔ Double click Maintenance Mode.bat from the desktop

➔ Double click KReboot32.exe (for windows 32 OS), or KReboot64 (for windows 64 OS) to reboot the kiosk in maintenance mode

➔ Go to Control Panel, Uninstall a program (view by Category) or Programs and Features (view by small icons)

➔ Select MAP Secure Browser from Uninstall or change a program list, then click Uninstall, answer Yes to conﬁrm the action

➔ Click Ok on MAP Secure Browser window to continue the removing process

Contact Meridian

We are focused on the success of your kiosk deployment.
Meridian oﬀers reliable, knowledgeable and approachable customer service ensuring our customer reaches a perfect solution to their kiosk businesses. Customers can depend on the Meridian team to help their kiosk business grow beyond expectations.

Meridian Customer Support Services

Meridian’s Technical Assistance Center (TAC) supports voice and online support across North America.

Services Include:

Timely access to expert technical support
Case Management
System Conﬁguration Support
Product Bulletins
Critical Situation Escalation
Knowledge Transfer
Support History
Drivers and Downloads
Email Updates
FAQs

Support Help Desk

The TAC Support Help Desk is open from 9AM to 5PM EST Monday-Friday.
Phone
866-454-6757, Select “Support”

Customer Service Email

service@mzero.com

Software Support

Email softwaresupport@mzero.com

Sales Support

Meridian has a strong presence in the North American markets and a history with many customers that goes back generations.
Meridian’s dynamic sales team represents all clients and their broad range of products for sales throughout North America. Over time Meridian has developed a reputation for stability and commitment to clients, as well as for exceptional product quality and customer service.

To contact the Meridian sales team:

Phone 866-454-6757, Select “Sales”
Email sales@mzero.com

About Meridian

Meridian is a fully integrated manufacturer of indoor and outdoor kiosks, interactive digital signage and self-service software. As a complete end-to-end self-service innovator, Meridian develops products and services all under one roof, providing greater eﬃciency, and lean, high-quality results. For nearly two decades, we’ve helped our partners succeed by designing, engineering, manufacturing and integrating hardware and software solutions from our 13-acre headquarters in North Carolina.
DESIGNED AND MANUFACTURED IN THE USA

Fast Facts

ISO 9001-2008 Certiﬁed
- UL Self-Certify Facility
Manufacturing Processes Comply with Green IT
- Experts in ADA, FCC and HIPAA Compliance
1,000’s of kiosks built and deployed across all industries
- Clients include WalMart, Ikea, Panasonic, Clear Channel, HP and Enterprise

Corporate Oﬃces

United States