This is a somewhat strange issue, but here it goes:
A team (about 15 users) in our organization uses a self-contained Ruby-on-Rails web app to search and view data for competitions. There wouldn't be a problem except the competition rules prohibit connecting to the internet, so any cloud or office servers are off-limits. However, they do allow us to bring our own devices in to the venue so long as the data is offline. Therefore the only solution I can think of short of rewriting the web application on each device (which we don't have the resources for) is to bring in a battery powered wireless server and have all the devices (iOS, Android, OS X, Windows, Linux) connect to it.
The issue is IT personnel cannot be there to support it all the time. That means it needs to be crazy easy to setup and stable even in less than optimal conditions (e.g. possible power failure or improper shutdown).
I have set up plenty of web app servers, but I'm always monitoring the boot and reboot processes so I can fix problems that are encountered, something I can't do in this case.
I was wondering if this can be achieved with a decent laptop, simple server configuration (on some kind of linux distro preferably Ubuntu or Centos), and an off the shelf wireless access point or requires something closer to an embedded server with custom assembled hardware and major software modifications(e.g. writing custom redundant software)? Are there any packages to help with this kind of stability?
