The Connected Products Guide
The guide to connected products — self-service kiosks, digital signage, security systems, smart lockers, point-of-sale systems, etc.
Introduction
Connected products combine hardware, proprietary software, peripherals, and internet connectivity to do jobs, solve problems, or deliver a solution or services to users — or customers — via technology like self-checkout kiosks, security systems, digital signage, smart lockers, self-service technologies, and point-of-sale (POS) systems among countless other products.
Connected products can be remotely controlled, monitored, and maintained through remote device management (RDM) software that connects to product components, collecting information and making it possible to administer those devices remotely.
Some of the most common device components that are RDM compatible include:
- Controller hardware like a computer or mobile device
- E.g., devices running operating systems such as Windows, Linux, Android, or in some cases, even iOS
- Network devices
- Uninterrupted power supply and smart power devices
- Proprietary software and software applications
- Peripheral devices such as printers, cameras, bill acceptors, credit card readers, touchscreens, bar code readers, scales, sensors, and many other extensions
Connected products can be common — like a digital menu at a quick-service restaurant — or uncommon like a golf simulator. They can also combine many products in a system, as with an access control system that incorporates smart locks, intercoms, touchscreen panels, camera systems, and more.
As more and more technology is developed, the number of connected products will grow.
Why a Custom Connected Product Solution Is Needed
Connected products — like self-checkout kiosks, security systems, smart lockers, and point-of-sale systems — are only useful so long as they’re operational. They are designed to serve users without constant technical oversight. When connected products experience downtime, users become frustrated and customers complain.
Connected product downtime harms a business reputation while increasing the load on customer service. Worse, downtime means lost revenue and costly on-site repairs.
Let’s take an example. Imagine a self-checkout kiosk at a grocery store goes down on a busy Saturday morning. The employees aren’t able to fix it and are required to block off the kiosk to signal it is not operational. While there are redundant self-checkout stations, they can’t keep up with the morning volume. Soon, lines form and shoppers get frustrated at the technology and the store. To add insult to injury, the employee managing the self-checkout is constantly having to override codes from barcode scanner errors, check IDs, and support other technical overrides. Those that are short on time may consider leaving. The store must get a technician onsite to fix the self-checkout kiosk right away, but this is especially expensive on a weekend. Meanwhile, revenue is being lost, and brand damage builds every minute. A bad brand experience is the shopper’s lasting impression. Next time, the customer vows to shop somewhere else.
Connected products need remote device management to avoid these kinds of situations. Remote device management — in this case remote monitoring and management for connected products — makes it possible for technical support and connected product teams to use “a single screen” for real-time observation of thousands of connected products and remote devices. Additionally, with an RMM platform to manage connected product fleets, organizations can automate functions such as onboarding, troubleshooting, software upgrades, and more.
→ Need a refresher on RMM? Read The Beginner's Guide to Remote Monitoring & Management
How Automations Saved a Company Nearly $40K
For example, a product team had nearly 20,000 Windows-based connected products that were plagued by a memory leak. The memory leak caused an application to freeze, rendering the remote devices useless and causing significant problems for the product’s end-users. Customer support was stuck reacting to angry calls, and expensive technicians were having to lay hands on the devices (i.e. “rolling a truck”).
To solve this problem, the product team built an automation using their remote device management platform — in this case, Canopy, a remote monitoring and management platform for connected products. The automation restarted the application or rebooted the system, triggered by alerts from the customer’s logging server. Results were immediate: 1,000 support hours per month saved; support tickets reduced by 50%; and ~150 site visits from support technicians avoided. These site visits cost an average of $250/each, meaning proactive issue detection and automatic resolution saved this connected products company nearly $40K.
For more, see Benefits of Remote Device Management.
Supporting Connected Product Fleets at Enterprise Scale
As companies rely more and more on connected products to drive their business and day-to-day operations, enterprise service teams struggle to keep up with the scale and complexity of this new technology. Network operations centers (NOC) are now expected to support an increasingly diverse landscape of connected products, each composed of unique combinations of hardware, OS, software, peripherals, environmental and network conditions, and more.
Without an efficient way to remotely monitor and manage fleets of connected products, Enterprise service centers are stuck manually reacting to problems in the form of customer support and break-fix field service tickets.
For example, consider a national quick-service restaurant that has hundreds of restaurants. Each restaurant relies upon dozens of connected products — i.e. self-service kiosks, POS systems, drive thru systems, kitchen display terminals, menus, cameras, ovens and fryers, ice cream and drink machines, etc. Each restaurant depends on these machines to operate continuously and for each to remain seamlessly integrated into the business. These connected products represent hundreds of possible points of failure, all of which require technical know-how to fix in the event of a problem. Without a centralized platform to manage these systems, connected product issues devolve into an exercise in support ticket management and onsite technician visits.
Whether it’s a QSR or a retailer managing their POS system, a storage facility, an apartment complex managing access control and security, or dozens of other businesses that rely on fleets of connected products, a system to manage these remote devices at enterprise scale is the only long-term solution.
With a platform designed to connect to, control, and manage these connected products, teams can shift from reactively managing support tickets to proactively solving connected product problems. They can even go as far as integrating connected product data and operations into other backend or enterprise systems. Leaders in this space are finding ways to make connected products extensions of the business, deeply connected and integrated into operations.
The only question is how to go about monitoring and managing the connected product fleet?
Build vs. Buy a Remote Monitoring and Management Solution
There are two default approaches to managing device downtime for connected products:
- Buy: Implementing a traditional remote monitoring and management (RMM) solution, i.e. one used for IT infrastructure
- Build: Develop a proprietary RMM solution and process for managing remote device issues as they arise.
Most connected product teams begin with the second approach. They build and maintain a proprietary RMM. In some cases, this solution can bolt on RMM capabilities too. However, this solution is both expensive and distracting.
The “buy” approach isn't much better because traditional RMM software is too specialized, being made for products like laptops, computers, servers, and other high-volume IT infrastructure, working within standard operating systems like Android, iOS, and Windows.
Traditional RMM software isn’t designed to adapt and manage the diverse unique software, hardware, network, and environmental requirements of today’s connected product solutions. Common RMM solutions (sometimes also referred to as unified endpoint management or “UEM”) aren’t able to conform to the proprietary and complicated nature of connected products. They aren’t designed to monitor and manage for the many possible points of failure of connected products.
For example:
- Controller hardware and peripheral devices can have outdated firmware
- Connected products can be subject to unexpected environmental conditions
- Software can have incorrect settings, freeze up or crash, or be misconfigured
- Networks can be unstable or unreliable
These issues and countless others all add up to downtime — downtime that may go unreported for hours, days, or even weeks and only be reported when end users complain.
To avoid device downtime — losing revenue, violating SLAs, resulting in costly repairs, and frustrating customers — a new approach is required:
Connected product and technical support teams need remote monitoring and management software for connected products.
Using an RMM platform designed for connected products makes it easy to reveal and correct problems as they occur, automatically, or even proactively. Using a RMM for connected products makes it intuitive to manage hundreds if not tens of thousands of devices and include the entire connected product ecosystem, from hardware to software, power to network conditions.
Canopy is remote monitoring and management for connected products. Uniquely suited to automate the management of connected products, from kiosks and digital signs to entire POS systems, Canopy can connect to and collect data from every endpoint. This deep and complete connection makes it possible to control every aspect of a remote product. Technical support teams use Canopy to automate remote device management and proactively attack downtime.
Rather than develop their own remote monitoring solution, connected products companies choose Canopy to monitor and manage their products — leveraging Canopy's ability to connect and control all kinds of remote devices.
For example, OpenTech Alliance, a self-storage technology company, switched to Canopy when it realized they lacked the expertise to monitor and manage cameras in addition to kiosks. By using Canopy, they were able to open up their ability to monitor and manage more products for their customers. Learn more about their decision here.
To learn more about RMM for modern connected products, see our Guide to Remote Device Management: RMM for Connected Products.
Now, let’s dig into some of the most common types of connected products.
Kiosks
Kiosks are a combination usually providing a touchscreen or tablet that’s secured in a larger device and leverages custom software to focus the device’s capabilities on a single service. They often have peripheral components, like printers, card readers or keypads, that complete a specific step in the user’s experience.
Remote monitoring and management supports the most common types of kiosks by making it easy to connect to kiosk components and translate remote device data into actionable insights. Connected product teams can use an RMM like Canopy for remote kiosk management to fix kiosks remotely and automate kiosk maintenance, minimizing kiosk downtime while providing full visibility and control over all the critical aspects of the kiosk ecosystem.
Self-Service Kiosks
Self-service kiosks are interactive terminals that allow customers to perform tasks independently, like ordering food at a QSR (fast-food restaurant), checking in for a flight at the airport, or purchasing tickets at a movie theater.
Information Kiosks
Information kiosks are digital devices that assist users in public spaces or large venues, like malls, hospitals, or popular tourist destinations.
Retail Kiosks
Retail kiosks are self-service stations in retail environments, like grocery stores, convenience stores, big box retail stores, or malls, that facilitate price checks, product searches, or self-checkout.
Schematic Diagram of Kiosk Products
Above is a diagram that visualizes a schematic of a typical kiosk system. Represented symbolically, you see how a PC controller running Windows or Linux (or MacOS) is connected to a printer and touchscreen. The kiosk product also connects to peripherals such as a credit card reader, bill acceptor, and any other custom hardware. Power and network are also depicted. Kiosks vary in functionality, and often are themselves part of larger systems — as with Point-of-Sale systems (see below).
For each part of the security system, an endpoint software RMM agent built for Canopy called "Leaf" is deployed onto the controller device (the PC in the case of the above schematic). Leaf enables data capture and transmit, command execution, software distribution, and local watchdog, and Leaf can be extended through its plug-in architecture, allowing connected product teams to leverage plugins that interface to unique hardware devices, control systems, and software applications making up the endpoint environment. Leaf is OS agnostic and has out-of-the-box Linux, Windows, and MacOS integration capabilities. The Leaf agent is designed to use minimal resources while in operation and carries a very minimal footprint, allowing it to be deployed on very small devices. (Read more about Leaf, Canopy's RMM agent | Learn more about RMM agents.)
Finally, you'll see depicted via the Canopy logo, itself. Canopy serves as the remote monitoring and management platform used to remotely manage the kiosk.
What Are the Most Common Pain Points for Kiosks?
Teams responsible for supporting kiosk deployments need a customizable RDM solution that connects to and manages all critical components of the product, not just the controller. Without visibility and access to every component of a kiosk, operators increase the odds of unreported downtime or limited product availability, which in turn can impact customer satisfaction and revenue.
For example, if a person tries to order at a restaurant and the self-service kiosk is not functioning as expected, they are stuck waiting for help or for another device to open up. What should be an empowering experience may result in a lowered order size and a bad customer impression. In extreme cases, they will leave the restaurant — or choose to eat somewhere else next time.
Whereas most solutions only focus on the computer controller within the kiosk, Canopy connects deeply and completely to a kiosk, ensuring broad visibility into the availability of the kiosk functionality and providing actions to remotely resolve issues to maximize kiosk uptime while providing real-time insight.
Ready to see how Canopy can connect and manage your fleet of kiosks? Let’s talk.
Point-of-Sale (POS) Systems
POS systems combine hardware and peripheral components, like cash registers, barcode scanners, printers, kitchen display terminals, digital menu boards, kiosks, and payment terminals, with software that’s specifically built to manage transactions and inventory.
POS systems are core to the retail and restaurant industries. At the extreme end, as with quick-service restaurants (QSR), POS systems orchestrate everything from self-service orders from kiosks to drive through technology to kitchen displays and menus to order printers and countless other examples. Because of the interdependent nature of POS systems in retail and restaurants (as well as other channels), malfunctions for any given device have a direct, negative impact on revenue.
POS systems can use remote monitoring and management for connected products to automate onboarding, configuration, and issue recovery. This minimizes downtime, while providing fleet-wide visibility into the operational status of the entire POS system.
Let’s look at the most common types — and components — of POS systems.
Tablets and Touchscreens
Most often used in tableside settings at restaurants, drive through lanes at fast food establishments (e.g. mobile ordering devices), or as a stand-in cash register, tablets and touchscreens are portable POS systems that facilitate a transaction without being in a set location.
Cash Registers
The most traditional type of POS systems, cash registers facilitate a transaction in a physical retail setting, like grocery stores, malls, or coffee shops.
Self-Checkout
Self-checkout stations (a.k.a. self-checkout kiosks) are a self-service technology common in grocery stores and big box retail stores. These POS systems combine touchscreens, printers, credit card readers, scales, multiple cameras, barcode scanners, conveyor belts, and even inventory management systems.
Schematic Diagram of POS Systems
Above is a diagram that visualizes a schematic of a point-of-sale system within a retail operation. Represented symbolically, you see how a tablet-based POS running Apple or Android that is connected to a touch screen, a credit card reader, a printer, power source, and network. The POS product runs software and is integrated into other systems — for example, the device could be integrated with inventory management systems. Or if the POS is part of a quick-service restaurant, it may connect to kitchen displays, drive through technology, self-service ordering kiosks, and more.
For the depicted POS, an endpoint software agent called "Leaf" is deployed onto the tablet. Leaf enables data capture and transmit, command execution, software distribution, and local watchdog, and Leaf can be extended through its plug-in architecture, allowing connected product teams to leverage plugins that interface to unique hardware devices, control systems, and software applications making up the endpoint environment. The Leaf agent is designed to use minimal resources while in operation and carries a very minimal footprint, allowing it to be deployed on very small devices. Read more about Leaf, Canopy's RMM agent.
Finally, you'll see depicted via the Canopy logo, itself. Canopy serves as the remote monitoring and management platform used to remotely manage the POS system.
What Are the Most Common Pain Points for POS Systems?
POS systems deal with a company’s most critical assets — money and inventory. This means if they go down, it will not only inconvenience the customer, but revenue will be lost and inventory mismanaged.
Support teams managing POS systems need fleet-wide visibility into the health status of their deployment so when issues are spotted at the device level, they can be solved quickly if not automatically.
Canopy is able to work across device types and integrate into existing systems, revealing the overall health of the POS system as well as the ability to monitor and analyze individual components. Using Canopy to manage these remote connected products, technical teams can make sure critical operations run smoothly, avoiding disrupted operations and lost revenue from card readers bricking, printers malfunctioning, screens going blank, and countless other things.
See how Revel Systems transformed their point-of-sale solution operations and automated remote device management for their POS fleet.
Ready to see how Canopy can connect and manage your POS systems? Let’s talk.
Smart Lockers
Smart lockers are storage containers that use hardware, like authentication panels and a locking mechanism, with software that’s designed to manage access, security, and notification systems.
Connected product remote monitoring and management serves smart lockers by consolidating monitoring into one dashboard, automating maintenance, and ensuring solution availability.
Let’s look at the most common types of smart lockers.
Click and Collect
Commonly seen with package deliveries, rental car and hotel key pickups, and in-store pickups, click and collect lockers, like an Amazon package locker, notify users when an item is ready, generate a unique barcode, and provide access to their item in the locker once the barcode is scanned.
Equipment Management
Equipment management lockers allow operators to keep track of inventory and understand when items are accessed and returned. These are often used by IT departments that have large device fleets to keep track of or by workplaces that want to provide employees with a secure place to house company-issued equipment.
What Are the Most Common Pain Points for Smart Lockers?
Smart lockers can appear simple, but they employ such a complex combination of software and hardware combination, they can often experience downtime or malfunction without anyone noticing until it’s problematic. Some of the challenges smart locker operators experience are failure to notify users of an item, security breakdowns, or inaccurate inventory tracking. When any of these issues occur, the provider runs the risk of loss of personal or company property or broken trust among users, which can have long term ramifications.
To address this, Canopy automates remote device management for smart lockers by connecting to and collecting data from the entire stack of technology involved. This deep and complete connection makes it possible to control every aspect of a smart locker, view real-time health of the system, understand the status of each sub-locker compartment, and avoid the costly effects of downtime.
Ready to see how Canopy can connect and manage your smart lockers? Let’s talk.
Digital Signage
Digital signage is display technology that uses screens, cabling, and media players in combination with content management system (CMS) to enable the sign’s functionality. They can be as large as video walls or as small as a simple LCD screen.
Remote monitoring and management for connected products serves the most common types of digital signage by monitoring all key components, including online/offline status of the signs, display resolution, PC configuration, connectivity hardware health, and status of the CMS.
Let’s look at the most common types of digital signage.
Advertisements
Advertisements are a widely used type of digital signage and are typically found in major public places, like bus stations, airports, and office buildings. They are often larger in size with rotating images and displays.
Informational
Informational signs typically require an interactive touchscreen and are most often used as menus or pricing displays. They are usually smaller in size and meant to be used in close proximity to the consumer.
Schematic Diagram of Security System Products
Above is a diagram that visualizes a schematic of a digital signage system. Represented symbolically, you see how a PC media player serves connects to display, operating as a system on a chip. The device is connected to a power source and a content management system.
An endpoint software agent called "Leaf" is deployed onto the signage system. Leaf enables data capture and transmit, command execution, software distribution, and local watchdog, and Leaf can be extended through its plug-in architecture, allowing connected product teams to leverage plugins that interface to unique hardware devices, control systems, and software applications making up the endpoint environment. The Leaf agent is designed to use minimal resources while in operation and carries a very minimal footprint, allowing it to be deployed on very small devices. Read more about Leaf, Canopy's RMM agent.
Finally, you'll see depicted via the Canopy logo, itself. Canopy serves as the remote monitoring and management platform used to remotely manage the digital signage system.
What Are the Most Common Pain Points for Digital Signage?
Some of the most frequent issues that teams managing digital signs face are CMS software failure, display and resolution issues, and other sources of downtime. Digital signs are also hard to repair as they aren’t always easily accessible. Imagine there’s a large advertisement that required equipment, like a forklift or crane, and several people to hang. If the resolution dims, not only is it expensive to get hands on it, the advertiser isn’t getting the placement they paid for.
The other major pain point with digital signage is the visual of downtime. The notorious CrowdStrike outage, noted as the worst in history when it occurred in July 2024, sent connected products of all kinds into an ongoing boot loop, displaying an error message on a blue screen. Widely known as the “blue screen of death” or “BSOD,” this impossible-to-ignore error screen signaled the products were down, turning into the worst kind of advertising.
To avoid costly and inconvenient issues like this, Canopy enables remote updates and monitoring and provides valuable insights to drive uptime, improve content delivery, and enable self-healing.
See how a Fortune 100 used RMM for connected products with Canopy to solve a critical display issue here.
Ready to see how Canopy can connect and manage your digital signage? Let’s talk.
Security Systems
Security systems combine hardware, like cameras, controllers, scanners, routers, and sensors, with software, like video monitoring and recording, application software, facial recognition, and motion and sound detection.
Remote monitoring and management for security systems helps maximize uptime, providing comprehensive coverage and simplifying device control.
Let’s look at the most common types of security system products.
Access Control Management
Access control systems typically manage home or building security and leverage motion detection to flag a potential intrusion.
Camera Systems
The most widely used type of security system, cameras provide ongoing visualization on a set area. These can include video doorbells, interior and exterior home cameras, and cameras throughout large commercial properties.
Emergency Response Systems
Emergency response systems deploy immediate assistance to a person or property in need of assistance. This can include instances like a home intrusion or house fire, as well as medical issues, like a fall.
Schematic Diagram of Security System Products
Above is a diagram that visualizes three connected product systems typically found in security systems: camera systems, access control systems, and emergency response systems. You can see how each is comprised of a central controller (or NVR/DVR) running Windows or Linux and several remote devices. For cameras, you see an NVR or DVR connects to a Power over Ethernet (PoE) switch, a router, and to IP cameras. For access control, a central controller can connect to scanners and motion detectors. For emergency response, a controller connects to sensors.
For each part of the security system, an endpoint software agent built for Canopy called "Leaf" is deployed onto the controller device (or NVR/DVR, in this case). The Leaf agent enables data capture and transmit, command execution, software distribution, and local watchdog. Additionally, Leaf can be extended through its plug-in architecture, allowing connected product teams to leverage plugins that interface to unique hardware devices, control systems, and software applications making up the endpoint environment. Leaf is OS agnostic and has out-of-the-box Linux, Windows, and MacOS integration capabilities. The Leaf agent is designed to use minimal resources while in operation and carries a very minimal footprint, allowing it to be deployed on very small devices. Read more about Leaf, Canopy's RMM agent.
Finally, you'll see depicted via the Canopy logo, itself. Canopy serves as the remote monitoring and management platform used to remotely manage the POS system.
What Are the Most Common Pain Points When Monitoring and Managing Security Systems?
Some of the most frequent issues that teams managing security systems face include: managing systems with multiple endpoints; difficulty with remote resolve; or downtime that leads to delayed monitoring or delayed notification of offline devices. These issues, while frustrating, also pose an increased risk because security systems ensure the safety of people and property.
Using Canopy for remote monitoring and management identifies these vulnerabilities and can support various configurations, providing granular visibility and control over all key elements in a solution to ensure security operations run smoothly.
Ready to see how Canopy can connect and manage your digital signage? Let’s talk.
The Future: Emerging Connected Products
Twenty years ago, DVD rental kiosks disrupted the brick-and-mortar video business which was widely viewed as bulletproof. This shift fundamentally changed what people expected with home entertainment and proves there is virtually no limit on what experiences can become connected. Today, we’re seeing the proliferation of connected devices across several areas with the potential for significant growth in coming years. Some of the fastest growing use cases are:
- Sports Simulators: Simulation optimized PCs that leverage sensors and object tracking software are appearing more and more at arcades, sports stores, and driving ranges. With the sports simulator market hitting an annual growth rate of nearly 16%, adoption will continue to rise.
- Charging Stations: Electric vehicle sales are increasing at record breaking speed. Composed of batteries, charging ports, wires, and specialized management software, ensuring the availability of charging stations will soon be imperative to everyone’s ability to get where they need to go.
- Event Streaming Systems: In a post-pandemic world, consumers have learned to expect access to any event on demand and from any location. Whether a major spectacle or a local high school event, automating these services ensures people never have to miss a moment.
While new connected products are emerging daily, the one commonality they have is the need for a fully customizable and configurable RDM solution.
At Canopy, we’ve experienced these challenges firsthand. Building on years of experience working with companies like NCR, Redbox, Dell, AT&T, and Ricoh and our ability to tailor our solution to fit the needs of any setup at any size and scale, Canopy can manage even the most complicated and diverse sets of connected products.
For more about remote device management, and specifically remote monitoring and management for connected products, check out our guide.
