[Zubersoft]

He may be using wifi to control the two tablets. Are you sure it's bluetooth?

[Kyle]

He may be using wifi to control the two tablets. Are you sure it's bluetooth?

According to iGig, they are using bluetooth. http://www.igigbook.com/i-gig-book-pager.aspx
You will have to decide which method you want to use; bluetooth is probably the easiest to implement, but Wi-Fi has a much better transmitting distance and would most likely be the most user friendly. You could get around the problem of whether or not there is an existing Wi-Fi network because most tablets and phones nowadays can behave as a Wi-Fi hot spot. (Airdroid's hot spot feature is a good example of this.)
Also, not all Windows devices have bluetooth, so Wi-Fi would be better in those cases.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 with Tapatalk

[otnt]

...it really would need to, in this day and age work with both Android devices and iOS devices.

Not really sure why iOS is mentioned (and discussed) when MobileSheets is clearly Android app. Apple boys have tons of apps with multiple iPads control.

Often times different instruments will have a charge paginated in a different way, meaning the pages turns aren't always at the same time.

1. I'm making my own sheet music
2. It ain't so difficult to rearrange pages to "be on the same page"
3. Ensemble/band sheet music on tablets is 90% for gigs and teaching. 90% of this sheet music would be suitable for multiple control.

You will have to decide which method you want to use; bluetooth or Wi-Fi.

I hope to be able to TURN SHEET MUSIC "hands free" as most of the musicians do use both hands while performing. All wireless turners I know are Bluetooth. Please let me know if you know about some Wi-Fi wireless page turners. In this case I would get Sony DPT-S1 and I can forget about android apps to TURN SHEET MUSIC "hands free".

Wi-Fi has a much better transmitting distance...

This was discussed five years ago at the iOS forums. Since then most iOS developers are using Bluetooth. Most of the places are cluttered with interfering WiFi signals. WiFi is dodgy in this case. It is advantage to use localised little Bluetooth network. And Bluetooth 4 is ultra low power.

...not all Windows devices have bluetooth...

Not really sure why Windows is mentioned but you can get tiny BT dongles for Windows devices.

[Kyle]

You will have to decide which method you want to use; bluetooth or Wi-Fi.

I hope to be able to TURN SHEET MUSIC "hands free" as most of the musicians do use both hands while performing. All wireless turners I know are Bluetooth. Please let me know if you know about some Wi-Fi wireless page turners. In this case I would get Sony DPT-S1 and I can forget about android apps to TURN SHEET MUSIC "hands free".

In this case, the discussion was more along the lines of "master/slave multiple tablets control" which makes sense in an ensemble, where one person makes the musical selections "on the fly" for the rest of the group. I play the viola in a string quintet, and when we are playing an unstructured gig (in other words, we're making musical selections "on the fly"), the first violinist decides what song to play, then verbally tells the other four musicians. This happens after every song. However, in a noisy (read 'party') environment, it is often difficult to catch the name of the song we're supposed to play. This is where the "master/slave" control would come in very handy. The leader (first violinist, in my case) would simply select the song he was going to play, and it would automatically load on the connected "slave" tablets. Each individual would still have their own hands-free page turning device, since not all songs can be efficiently paged the same.

Wi-Fi has a much better transmitting distance...

This was discussed five years ago at the iOS forums. Since then most iOS developers are using Bluetooth. Most of the places are cluttered with interfering WiFi signals. WiFi is dodgy in this case. It is advantage to use localised little Bluetooth network. And Bluetooth 4 is ultra low power.

Most mobile devices have Bluetooth distance of 30'~60' compared to Wi-Fi at ~150'. Most Android devices can also be their own Wi-Fi hot-spot, removing the need for an existing Wi-Fi network. To be fair though, 60' really is plenty for most occasions!

...not all Windows devices have bluetooth...

Not really sure why Windows is mentioned but you can get tiny BT dongles for Windows devices.

I mentioned Windows because Mike plans to port MS to Windows as an app sometime in the future.


Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 with Tapatalk

[kohanmike]

Seems to me that a "Pro" labeled app should have all the bells and whistles. My limited experience with professional musicians is that if they use a tablet, it's always an iPad. I'm a totally amateur ukulele player and I started using music with an iPad, but the screen was too small for me so I found a 13.3" Android for $199 and MobileSheets, which works very well for me now (when my friends heard I bought an Android, they were shocked).

[itsme]

If MS would offer such a Master/Slave connection we would give it a try to change songs for the whole band with one click on stage.
Would it be possible to link several tablets with the same bluetooth pedal without the need to implement special functionality within MS? Could anybody who has access to a bluetooth pedal and more than one tablet try that? Thanks in advance

[pearsonchuck]

My aim is to try to find a happy middle ground where I'm meeting the requirements of the majority of users. The problem is that I don't always have a good idea of what the majority wants. I usually find this out by getting tons of emails from people all asking for the same changes. I do get plenty of emails about being able to connect tablets with a master/slave model, so I know a good number of people want this. It doesn't seem like the majority, but I still want to add it add some point, because I believe it opens up MobileSheets to be used by another market segment.

Mike

I think this might be something to look at down the road,  but in the interest of most users.,  I would recommend putting a  configuration freeze on MS Pro 5.0; release ASAP and  consider this option for a  follow on software release.

[otnt]

Now when MobileSheetsPro is out of Beta I am looking forward for advanced Bluetooth features.
MSPro can be dowloaded from http://play.google.com/store/apps/detail...esheetspro

[itsme]

After having a bluetooth pedal available now, we tried initiating bluetooth pairing and linking two tablets to the same pedal, which failed for the second tablet. It seems that bluetooth is designed to accept the first successful connection and deny all following ones. 
Can somebody with a deeper understanding of bluetooth design clarify that?

[Zubersoft]

I believe bluetooth connections can only be between two devices, due to the nature of pairing. Everything I have read says that bluetooth just does not support this. It's a limitation of the technology, not the devices.

Mike

[itsme]

That's what I assumed. Thanks for clarification

[popoff]

Hmmm ... Bluethoot support multicast, but the bad news is that BT stacks in android doesn't support it.

But it seems that there is a library for android to make BT socket connections between one master and up to 7 slaves. I never tried it.

https://github.com/arissa34/Android-Mult...th-Library

[otnt]

I believe bluetooth connections can only be between two devices, due to the nature of pairing. Everything I have read says that bluetooth just does not support this. It's a limitation of the technology, not the devices.

Mike

I was so desperate I did try to connect AirTurn with two Nexus 7 tablets at the same time. So I can obviously confirm this does not work.

BUT as posted by "Popoff" up to 8 Bluetooth devices can form a network called a piconet. One of these devices is designated as master and all other devices are slaves.

If you need to connect more devices two piconets can be connected by bridging - where one of the slaves acts as the master for its own piconet. Such a network of piconets is called a scatternet.

[Image: main-qimg-02b5f4e96e46954f90dcf548b1acd174]

Android-Multi-Bluetooth-Library mentioned in earlier post by popoff has Beer-Ware license and has additional information at http://arissa34.github.io/Android-Multi-...h-Library/
Is there somebody with knowledge and will at this forum who could help to implement Bluetooth networking to MobileSheets?

[bumblebee]

I have been using up to 5 iPads with unRealBook a number of times. The master optionally connects to Airturn, with the others set to slave (auto connect is optional but useful). There is a network key (password) that can be entered on each. I have a small TP-link device to act as wifi hotspot, taking power into its USB port (I usually connect to mains, but portable battery works if there is no power nearby). I often just leave it in my bag off-stage; if there were connection problems I might sit it higher for a better signal. It means we are independent of any other wifi networks and any problems that might occur with them and the iPads find it each gig automatically once it is turned on.
Although I have used bluetooth connecting a couple of iPads (and unRealBook) I have usually used wifi—me thinking it is a little more robust, and it has not presented any problems.

In practice:
For some of the gigs we only needed one or two page chord charts, so had one for each transposing instrument and another for the drummer with the name of the song in a large font (and duplicated the page for each page of the song so when the page turned mid-song, nothing really happened). You can also create one for the singers, just the lyrics.

For notation and longer songs, each PDF needs measures on the same pages and songs starting on the same page number obviously, but it is possible for the master only be used to send the first page of the new piece then everyone taps for their own page turns during the piece (you might need to have some PDFs with blank pages so each song starts on the same page number!). Run the master off a small device just to set the new song, but no one reads off it.
The problem with page turning for everyone is that some will be reading ahead faster.

In classrooms (and other situations) another alternative might be using Chromecast.

This is a very useful feature and I hope it will be added into Android and up-coming Windows versions of MS.

[bumblebee]

Mike,
if you implement this, a few initial thoughts:
- remember to deal with duplicate song or PDF titles (since already it is possible to have duplicate song titles), perhaps it only works within a specific setlist or collection although this would be limiting (for an encore that is not that list but elsewhere on each tablet)
- the protocol loads the song or PDF and sends page number (with error message if not found)
- a check to check each tablet has the correct files available (even a checksum might work)
- the server can view the tablets names when connected
- a future enhancement, text messages from the server can be sent (or between each)
- another idea, the master is merely a file/page sender (could be a phone) so works a little like a bookmark or setlist, where, tapping a song title will just load a song's first page (where each player then controls their page turns until the end of the song) to each tablet