Bluetooth syncing

[joshuagruenstein]

We have no assurance of cell communication at either the Armory or RIT, and especially if we use tablets, we need to be able to sync devices over Bluetooth.

[truell20]

This worries me a little bit. Can we make sure we can't do hot spots and there will be no wifi.

[truell20]

Bradley points out that the armory normally allows wifi: http://www.armory.nyc/wifi-access/

[joshuagruenstein]

They'll definitely turn off wifi, as it interferes with the control system. That is what they do at other regionals. The question is whether there'll be cell reception, but even if there is, that won't help us if we're using tablets.

[truell20]

If tablets were the only reason to go for bluetooth syncing, we'd just make it work with phones.

[joshuagruenstein]

Is bluetooth syncing really that hard? I feel like, especially with a singular base station that every tablet syncs to, ionic should make it fairly easy.

[Bradley21890543]

Bluetooth is platform dependent so it might be more difficult with ionic.

[truell20]

It's not trivial. Bluetooth with ionic is very fucky since it tries to be device agnostic.

[Bradley21890543]

Why don't we rewrite the app in Swift & Java so we can use the native APIs?

[joshuagruenstein]

I'm just worried we'll get to a regional, not have cellular reception, and be screwed. What if we supported syncing with a base station via USB? After scouting, everybody syncs with the computer to offload their data, then again to get all the data on everybody's devices. It's obviously not ideal, but it saves us in case we have an issue with cellular.

[Bradley21890543]

I don't think that is possible with ionic.

[joshuagruenstein]

@Bradley21890543 Unless we have members of P&E who are already very familiar with native android and IOS dev, and willing to put in a lot of time, I think ionic makes more sense. Especially considering how much functionality we'd like to add.

[truell20]

There's also odd edge cases with merging data. With a scouting team as large as ours, it's not inconcievable that two people write down conflicting scouting info about a team.

[joshuagruenstein]

Don't we already have that issue with our current model?

[truell20]

Also, y would cell reception go away. Can't we just check if its available before making a decision.

[joshuagruenstein]

That's probably a good idea. Do we have team members that have been to the Armory who we can ask? For RIT we should be able to ask Jason Levy.

[truell20]

@joshuagruenstein Since you can immediately sync, we don't really have that problem. People know what scouting info we have at all times, and so know what they're overwriting when they make a change to existing info.

With the USB model, everyone's in the dark.

[Bradley21890543]

This doesn't look sooooo bad: https://ionicframework.com/docs/v2/native/ble/

[truell20]

Their bluetooth frameworks aren't great. I've played with them before. Main problem is getting Android and iPhone to play nice together. They have a different set of features.

[joshuagruenstein]

Bradley's link is for Ionic V2 tho, which I doubt you've played around with. Might make sense to port our app to ionic v2 anyway.

[truell20]

@joshuagruenstein We have runners who have been to the armory track, like @rashkovert.

[truell20]

Ionic V2 probably won't make a difference for the problems with iOS and Android if the native device feature sets are different. Maybe I'm wrong.

[joshuagruenstein]

Might we want to switch anyway, just to be more future proof, especially considering the current app is so simple?

[truell20]

Sure. I was talking about adding bluetooth not switching the app over to v2.

[joshuagruenstein]

Yeah, this is a separate issue. Just opened #16.