[ghmerrill]

At this point (but after some period of real frustration  ) ) this is just a matter of curiosity and enlightenment for me ...

Background:  For well over a year I've been using MobileSheets on both my Chromebook (casually) and my old Lenovo Windows 10 tablet (heavily and seriously).  All has been going well.  But that Window system is fading out of its service life and has become sporadically unreliable in a couple of ways -- and so ...

Yesterday I drove to Best Buy and got a 13" iPad Air tablet, and got it mostly set up so I can use it.  Then I got the iPad version of MobileSheets installed.  Great.  No problem.  Then I went about configuring my two AirTurn pedals (a Duo BT-500 and a BT500/S2).  The result was pretty much mind-numbing psychosis and frustration. 

I just COULDN'T get either of the pedals to work!!  Either the tablet couldn't see the pedal, or it could see it just fine, but it just wasn't working in MobileSheets.  Some of these problems turned out to be issues with how Bluetooth devices are detected and attached in an environment of multiple systems vying for their use.    And I finally got that straightened out.  But even then, even with the peddle added and recognized, there was no effect of it within MobileSheets ... UNTIL ...

In desperation, and looking at everything one more time, I looked at the AirTurn Direct Mode in the Pedal Settings.  Then -- BINGO! -- it works!!!  At least it's working with the BT500/S2.  Now today I have to get it working with the DUO.  But my question is this ...

Is this expected for the iPad?  Is it necessary -- or best -- to use the Direct Mode?  Why is that?  Mostly this is just curiosity.  But I'd also like to really understand what's going on here in case I have some issues in the future.

Any insight will be appreciated.

[Zubersoft]

It is not necessary. However, if you don't want to use AirTurn Direct Mode, you have to switch the pedal to mode 3 which will require pairing and will send a page up or page down key command. Then you would just pair the pedal normally in the bluetooth settings in the operating system (and it then effectively acts as a computer keyboard). It's better to use AirTurn Direct Mode in general though, as it uses less battery life and doesn't mess with the virtual keyboard at all. There is also a setting that some users have to change when not using AirTurn Direct Mode: Accessibility -> Keyboards & Typing -> Full Keyboard Access. That setting can cause issues in some cases, so users often have to turn it off.

Mike

[ghmerrill]

I don't have a problem with using AirTurn Direct Mode -- I just wasn't using it previously.  I'm puzzled about why it seems to have presented as an issue with the iPad and wasn't one with the Windows or Chromebook systems.  As I recall, I did put each of the pedals in mode 3 for the Win and Chromebook systems.  Currently the BT500/S2 is in mode 1 (I think  ) and I don't know what mode the DUO is in.

Ideally (and in the context of having a "primary" tablet and a "secondary" one as a backup), one would like to have the same pedals work with MobileSheets (or anything else) in the same way on both systems -- so that you could substitute one tablet for the other without reprogramming or reconfiguring anything concerning the pedals.  But I'm now unsure of how realistic that is -- and it's largely a "theoretical" issue, I suppose, and silly to worry about.

I think what I'll try to do now is to get the DUO to work with the iPad (so it can serve as the "backup pedal" and "home use pedal"), and then then try to retrofit that to the MobileSheets instance on the Windows system.  If that doesn't work, I won't care a lot about that, but it's hard to imagine how it wouldn't.