Connect it to barcode reader

[RussHobbs]

could be interesting to have barcodes plates and a reader connected to the robot, in particular when there will be lots of plates (instead of going down the menu)

[theosanderson]

Sorry for the delay - I thought this had become much more complicated now that we use iPads but actually it's not. @fschwach you guys could buy a bluetooth scanner like https://www.amazon.com/Inateck-BCST-10-Wireless-Bluetooth-Barcode/dp/B00DZFOH4W for the iPads. This just types out the number encoded by the iPad. We would have a new field for plates with a barcode number with which they could be searched for. It really would be pretty straightforward I think. Liam has a label printer.

[fschwach]

Good idea. Yes, that scanner looks like it would do the job. It's not our priority but we will try it out some time. I will get one ordered now and tend to it when I have some spare time.

[fschwach]

Just to mention that we did buy this barcode reader:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0753S29QW/ref=emc_b_5_i
but there is a problem to be aware of: with this type of bluetooth reader, you can't have the reader connected AND use the keyboard at the same time on an iPAD. This is because the reader emulates a keyboard itself. That makes it pretty much useless for us because you want to scan plates but you need to enter other things as well and you would have to constantly pair and unpair the bluetooth device to achieve that. There are readers that use a different bluetooth profile that allows switching. Apparently this one does:
https://www.arkscan.com/product/barcode-scanner/wireless-barcode-scanners/es301-mini-bluetooth-barcode-scanner
But I haven't tested it and I don't know how easy it is to use in practise.

[theosanderson]

Gah, sorry about that.

This answer (which may be out of date): https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/295088/how-to-bring-up-the-virtual-keyboard-on-ios-when-a-bluetooth-keyboard-is-connect suggests you can bring up the keyboard.

But having to do that manually may still be annoying. We used to have an HTML-based numpad for numerics which we could do again which would mean you would only have to manually bring up the keyboard for naming plates initially.