Power Reboot / Timeout Device
Do you have a kiosk that needs to be up 24 hours a day, 7 days a week dependably? A hardware watchdog is one way to make sure such a system is down for a minimal length of time. One such device is the TimeOut-2400, made by TimeOut Devices, Inc.

The Product
According to the manufacturer, the TimeOut-2400 offers "complete, automatic control over a kiosk or any unattended Personal Computer (PC), file server, gateway, and /or modem. It is a fully programmable timer and AC power switch with a built-in RS-232 interface and a telephone ring detector. TimeOut-2400 can power down and restart an attached PC and/or modem if it locks up or if the modem does not answer."

I reviewed the TO-2400D version, which has U.S. power connectors (the TO-2400U has IEC power connectors for worldwide use). When I opened the box, all I found was the TO-2400 - no manual, no instructions, and no software disk. The product label gave the name of their web site (www.timeoutdevices.com - I knew that already), where I quickly got all the information I needed, including a user guide and a Windows 98 driver.

Our Environment
My client's kiosk is a 266MHz K-6 with 64M RAM and a 6 Gig hard drive. Peripherals are a touch screen monitor, a bar code scanner, a fast thermal printer, and a 56Kb modem. It uses Windows 98, PCAnywhere, and our custom application software. It is normally "off-line", and daily file transfers are done through PCAnywhere.

It works pretty well, but about once every week or so (depending on usage), it locks up - hard. When this happens (we only find out the day after a file transfer fails), someone (read ME) must go to the site, open the enclosure, and reboot the system. Often, the keyboard (inside the enclosure) is locked up also, so a complete power-off/power-on reset is required to bring the kiosk back to life. And the kiosk could have been inoperative for over a day by this time!

Installation and Setup
Hooking up the TO-2400 was fairly simple - I needed an additional power cord, a 9-pin serial cable, and a telephone cord. I connected the serial cable to an open serial port (COM2, the touch screen uses COM1, the scanner uses the USB port), and the telephone cable to the unused "phone" jack on the modem. The other ends were connected to the TO-2400. The TO-2400 fit easily into the kiosk, but I would recommend a little bit of Velcro tape to keep it out of the rat's nest in the bottom of the enclosure.

After plugging in the power cables, the kiosk booted up. I then copied the driver software to a new c:\timeout directory, created a shortcut to watchdog.exe, and moved the shortcut to the startup group. I then rebooted the machine.

When the machine booted, the watchdog driver put a message on the screen: "TimeOut Not Responding". I clicked on OK, and it happened again. Finally, it said "TimeOut Not Attached". I then read the manual and realized that if I was hooked up to COM2, then the command line in the shortcut had to be "c:\timeout\watchdog.exe COM2". The default is COM1.

I fixed that and rebooted. The watchdog started, along with the PCAnywhere Host. Our kiosk software started just fine, and all appeared to be operating normally.

Testing
I have a diabolical little program that will totally addle any computer running Windows. So I ran it. Shortly, the machine displayed the "Blue Screen of Doom" and just sat there. About three minutes later, the TO-2400 turned the power off for about ten seconds. When the computer restarted, it ran ScanDisk, and then everything was fine again.

Then I shut down PCAnywhere and dialed up the kiosk from my cell phone. As advertised, after nine rings the TO-2400 shut down and restarted the kiosk.

I also tested the new scheduling feature. This feature allows one to power up and power down the kiosk on a daily schedule. When the scheduled "DOWN" time is reached, the watchdog program does a smooth windows shutdown and then powers off the machine until the scheduled "UP" time. The one-line file "schedule.dat" controls the entire process.

Although our kiosk is intended to be on all the time, I decided to use this feature to perform a daily shutdown at 4AM for ten minutes. This lets us start each day with a smooth power-on reset, which greatly improves the responsiveness of our kiosk.

Conclusion
The TimeOut-2400 is both well designed and well constructed. During my three weeks of testing, it operated dependably. It never rebooted the kiosk unnecessarily, and it never failed to reboot the kiosk when needed or scheduled. And by my count, it saved me from making two trips to the kiosk site. In my book, it's paid for itself already.

The Reviewer
Ed Zawojski is a software engineer whose background ranges from home dialysis machines to point-of-sale interfaces to kiosks. He can be reached at Zawojski@aol.com.