Visiting VR Zone Shinjuku in Tokyo

I had a chance to visit in April, 2018 and loved my overall experience.

It was like Ghost In The Shell themed VR laser tag.

Japan. It’s been on my list of place to visit for years. Decades at this point. I finally got to this Spring. On this trip, I got to experience a Live Events tech space that I’ve only previously seen and worked with in the context of pop up shop style one offs for concerts, sports tournaments.

The Concept

If you’re in the US and you’ve heard of The Void. Perhaps, you’ve been there. I’m about to go check that out next week. VR Zone Shinjuku is a similar VR theme park. I got to play a 3 on 3 game of VR laser tag as a Ghost In The Shel themed operative whose mission is to take out “the terrorists” (the opposing team of 3 in our case).

The Tech

The staff at VR Zone Shinjuku were naturally fairly tightlipped about specifics of how everything works behind the scenes. No photos were allowed inside, past the entrance.

However, they headset was HTC Vive, coupled with what looked like custom VR tracker shin guards, a gauntlet and body sensor belt that allowed for full range of motion wireless tracking. The ceiling had a ton of what looked like infrared sensors, pointed in every possible direction.

Each player had an MSI VR ONE Backpack PC strapped to their back.

The Vive headset had custom wireless trackers mounted on top of it as well.

The Staff

These guys were very professional and on top of their game. I was very impressed. The team was highly knowledgeable on the complex gear up procedure and it seemed like everyone spoke at least 3 languages (Japanese, Mandarin and English). I deal with Brand Ambassadors at live events on a regular basis – the VR Zone Shinjuku staff were in my top 3 crews of all time.

Meraki MDM and iOS 10.0.2 – “App Already Scheduled For Management” and “Unable to install right now” Error Messages

The Symptoms

The issues this time were very similar, almost identical to what I’ve written about here. Meraki’s individual device page Activity Logs would show us the following error over and over again: “App… Already Scheduled For Management”. On the remote end, in a different city, an on-site event lead would be trying to install and getting the vague “Unable to install right now” popup message repeatedly.

The Workaround

We’ve tried everything from uninstalling all provisioning profiles from our iPads (via Settings > General > Profiles) to sending uninstall/reinstall signals from the Meraki dashboard, both from the individual device page and from the individual app page.

We eventually worked past our “Unable to install right now” message but then got stuck with grey stub icons for our apps that said “Waiting…” under the grey image.

Nothing worked until we did a full factory reset of each iPad, re-set up our Apple ID via the Settings app, re-downloaded the free Meraki app, re-registered with Meraki using our network ID.

Good times were had by all. Dinner was eventually served. Experiential / Live Events marketing + wireless technology = be prepared to have your tech guys on standby.

Meraki MDM and iOS 9.3.1 – “App Already Scheduled For Management” Error Message

We kept getting this message on two out of five iPads recently, first with iOS 9.2.1. We updated to 9.3.1, same issue. We’ve had this “App Already Scheduled For Management” message come up in the Event Log and Activity Log in the dashboard, on each individual device page.

There were some unique symptoms this time around:

1. The app would get prompted for an Install, we’d tap that Trust/Install button
2. Immediately after, iOS would prompt us for an App Store / iTunes login
3. We’d cancel, as we’ve done lots of times in the past
4. our MDM app published for enterprise distribution would start installation and quick shortly after, giving a generic “unable to install right now” message.

Note – I was working with a buddy who was located remotely, so I had to rely on them telling me what their screen looks like and what the messages are, etc. I didn’t have the privilege of looking at the device as I’m trying to “Re-push to all”, “Re-push to missing” from the Systems Manager app page or “Update” or “Install” from each registered device’s page.

Usually, clicking “cancel” on the iTunes / App Store login works just fine.

This time, it turns out the remotely located buddy / their teammate started creating the iTunes / App Store account but didn’t finish. So, they created the user name and login but didn’t click through all of the “Agree” type fine print pages in the sign up process. As a result, I’m guessing iOS disabled the ability to install ANY and ALL apps, until this unfinished iTunes process was completed.

Sure enough, after the remotely located employee re-logged into iTunes/App Store and finished that sign up process, our enterprise MDM app managed via Meraki’s Systems Manager installed within a few minutes, after I re-pushed it.

Notes on Cisco’s Meraki Systems Manager as an MDM Solution

A few of the devs on my team recently got a chance to try out the free version of Meraki’s Systems Manager. In this case, I’m using MDM as an acronym for Mobile Device Management. We used the system on and off for most of 2015 to distribute some apps published using an enterprise provisioning profile for iOS.

Use cases

Our usual scenario involved a series of iPads, often 10 – 30 of them. They would be sent out to an event space on a convention floor, a mall booth, an outdoor event space (like Six Flags). Sometimes the devices would be used for user registration, running on a local network inside a stadium. One project involved a bunch set up outside a traveling food truck, that drove from town to town. A few projects required sweeps registration or mailing list sign up of some sort. One large project involved multiple Elo Touch Screens that ran Windows Pro and traveled between mostly outdoor events. Since most of our events involved using Meraki with a series of iPads, I’ll use the .ipa app upload process as the example going forward.

Overall impression

Overall, if your app is under 30MB in file size, Meraki is a great solution. Just set up your account, go to

• Systems Manager > MDM > Apps
• select “Add New” in the upper right corner of the page and “iOS enterprise app” from the dropdown.
• Under Location, choose “Upload an ipa” from the dropdown and follow the given options, as needed. Click Save Changes and you’re set.
• Add devices (Systems manager > MDM > add devices) and use tags to automatically install your app on the appropriate device
• Once the app’s live and installed, you can update using the same App page (Systems Manager > MDM > Apps, click your app name)

Some issues we came up against

• The Meraki dashboard doesn’t seem to allow you to search “Clients” (Systems manager > Monitor > Clients, what the system calls the devices you’ve registered) by convenient terms like serial number or device name. Sometimes I have a lot of devices with a given tag and I need to make sure a specific device is in that list. Being able to search by device serial number would save me time.
• Enterprise apps larger than 30MB in size are often problematic to update. It often took multiple attempts over a few days to get the update to work, even after on-site connectivity was good for other purposes, such as playing back a streaming video off of sites like CNN.com.
• On-site firewall at YMCA branches (using YMCA WiFi) were blocking remote app updates.
• Spotty venue WiFi (read: convention floor WiFi) and sometimes spotty MiFi connections are an issue if your app requires an update or needs to send more than just text data. App updates for apps bigger than a few MB, required taking the device to another location with strong, consistent WiFi.
• When you’re stuck on an issue, such as an app just won’t install, no matter what you do, there’s not much google-able info out there. Stackoverflow is very helpful to keep you moving, past bugs and roadblocks, but not with the free version of Meraki’s System’s Manager. We haven’t yet had the need to contact Meraki support (given our previous experience with trying to reach out to support with free products, we pursued the issues on our own, so far successfully).

Some conclusions

I’d highly recommend Meraki for smaller sized apps, especially ones that are not likely to require an app update during your short term event’s duration. For longer term installations, larger apps, be prepared to budget for and plan for on-site travel for one of your developers, technologists or IT guys to help with initial installs or especially problematic app updates.

This has less to do with MDM, and more with network connectivity, but your MDM will largely depend on how good your connection is. Seriously consider / advise your client to purchase a data plan for the device, rather than relying on WiFi alone. Find out ahead of time, which mobile service has a reputation for working best in your target location. Don’t use Verizon, if AT&T is generally known to have better service in your event’s target area. If your devices are PCs, by all means, run hard lines (Ethernet) and bypass wireless issues all together. Just keep in mind, the longer those Ethernet cables, the lower the signal tends to be.