What’s an Street Hub?

Street Hubs are a kind of kiosk. BT has placed several of these on UK streets. They provide Wi-Fi connectivity, calls, limited info about the local area and advertising. If you’ve heard of NYClink, basically that.

More info is on BT’s webslite.

The tablet on the side runs Android and is the focus of this post.

Note: I’m looking at a grey/silver one from when they were called “InLink”. I haven’t tried the newer black units.

Escaping to settings

To discover much at all, I escaped to the settings app. This doesn’t seem to work for all of them, but I happened to try an abnormal one.

1. Open a webview, for example by checking the Terms and Conditions or Privacy Policy.
2. Select some text by tapping and holding it. At the top of the screen, tap Share then choose Messaging.
3. In Messaging, open the settings, then tap ‘SMS Enabled’.
4. Tap ‘Tethering and portable hotspot’, then the search icon in the top right.
5. Search for the settings you need to.

Note: As long as you reach the Settings app and can search, any option goes for step 4.

The settings app proved very useful and taught me a lot about the tablet. And Flappy Droid is fun :)

About device

Here is some information from the ‘About device’ page in settings:

Model number: msm8960
Processor info: QCT APQ8064 CDP
Android version: 5.1.1
Baseband version: Unknown
Kernel version: 3.4.0-g039ba5c-000444-g610cd13-dirty
ubuntu@ip-192-168-109-214 #2
Mon Mar 16 13:56:21 UTC 2020
Android security patch level: May 1, 2016
Build number: LMY47V-test-keys
Release Version: 1.8.5

Interesting apps

Thanks to the Process Stats page in developer settings, I managed to get some package names.

• BT Dialler (org.linphone) - Linphone???
• KioskMaintenance (net.adxba.kioskmaintenance)
• net.adxba.keyboardwatcher (package name and name shown are the same)
• Hexnode MDM (com.hexnode.hexnodemdm) - During the setup, the domain adxba.hexnodemdm.com is filled in already.
• BT Launcher (net.adxba.btlauncher) - This is the app you see first when using the tablet.

ADXBA is a digital signage company.

Interesting observations

Here are some things I can’t really turn into a section:

• If you switch/create users, Hexnode MDM will probably pop up first so you can set it up. Please do not ever set up Hexnode on a new user, it stops you from switching back.

• The hangup button appears to be the power button, based on the fact that on one kiosk/s, it locks the screen.

• There are several downloads for blacklist.json on the tablets I checked. The other ones are named blacklist-XXXXX.json where X is a digit.

• No signs of any cellular ability. No IMEI or connection info. The stock dialler doesn’t work for calls.

• When I turned on the developer settings, USB debugging and mock location were already enabled. BT Launcher seems to have something to do with mock location, for some reason.