Building the first kiosk mode screen

The kiosk screen

The main job this month was kiosk mode: the screen a clock-in tablet shows all day. It opens the front camera full screen, finds faces in the picture on the device itself, and draws a frame around each face it sees. When it has a clear face, the app sends it for recognition and gets back who it is.

This was the largest single change of the early project. Most of it was camera plumbing: reading frames quickly, drawing overlays, and keeping the work off the main thread so the screen stays smooth.

Matching a new specification

Mid-month we reworked the screens to match an updated specification. The kiosk gained clear clock-in and clock-out buttons. Sign-in got proper email and password fields with a show-or-hide password toggle. A new enrolment screen used the camera to capture an employee's face, so the kiosk had something to recognise them against.

Then we finished the registration work started in August. An admin console now sits behind the kiosk, with a list of employees to choose from when enrolling someone. Together these made a working loop: register the tablet, enrol people, and let them clock in.

A pause

A few smaller changes followed into early 2023, including spoken cues during enrolment and a new app name and icon. After that the project went quiet. There were no further commits until March 2026, when the work picked up again on the same codebase.