Swapping smartphones and bluetooth keyboards

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Swapping smartphones and bluetooth keyboards

mincklerstraat

9:23 pm on Feb 24, 2015 (gmt 0)

I am working on a web project for a homeless shelter with multiple houses, to allow shelter supervisors to take notes.

The shelter has a very low budget, and I am trying to make things as easy and cheap as possible for them.

Many of the shelter supervisors already have smartphones. So I'd like to let them enter notes on their smartphones.

I am guessing that for many of them, the keyboard of the smartphone will be a problem.

I am looking at multi-device bluetooth keyboards like one from Iogear (also has trackpad - [amazon.com...] and one from Logitech - [amazon.com...]

Idea is that each house has one of these keyboards, and when supervisors need to take notes, they just pull out the keyboard and start taking notes on their smartphone.

Does this sound reasonable, and like it would work?

Most of the houses are not in reach of wifi.

lucy24

11:05 pm on Feb 24, 2015 (gmt 0)

Wouldn't it depend on the smartphone? iOS definitely supports bluetooth connections; I've done it. It's a bit of a pain if the keyboard is normally paired with some other computer because you have to un-pair it. (It's been a while since I tried it; my current keyboard isn't bluetooth so I can't run over and re-check.) You can have lots of keyboards connected to one device, but you can't have the same keyboard connected to more than one device concurrently.

engine

5:00 pm on Feb 25, 2015 (gmt 0)

Why not consider a voice transcript app, which will eliminate the need for additional hardware? Some of the apps are free.

hth

mincklerstraat

10:55 am on Feb 26, 2015 (gmt 0)

lucy24, engine: thank you very much for your replies. lucy24 - yes, I think it does depend on the smartphone. I suppose I'm asking about smartphones in general - like, are chances good that most smartphones could swing this - or do smartphones presuppose that they are stuck to one bluetooth keyboard, with a lot of extra config actions - sending password, etc. - to pair-unpair? Or is it likely that most of these guys' smartphones will keep in their memory up to 6 or so pairings? Engine: that is one particularly helpful suggestion! I hope to try that one out.