RFID/NFC - hands free

[hoppynet]

Hi Peter

Is there any possibility to keep the NFC permanently active so the runner does not have to press the screen to Scan for Tag. I have trialled the RFID and the setup works excellently apart from the need to interact with the smart phone - cold wet fingers, rain, "get phone out-unlock screen-press scan-scan-lock phone-put phone away" takes a lot longer than my old faithful plastic manual punches do.

The geo punches are great but runners notice a differences at checkpoints caused by GPS latency (early punch, late punch) - especially the front runners who trim shoelaces to save weight (you know the type!). RFID tag punching seems to cure this issue but the screen interaction seems the deal breaker at the moment.

Thanks
hop

[WithaMap]

I have been practicing with the NFC tags as well and this is a question that I was going to ask as well.

[Peter Effeney]

Hop,

Sorry about the delay in responding.

We had considered continuous scanning when we first implemented NFC scanning ... but there seemed to be very little information around about the implications of this... eg would something in Android/iOS timeout, impact on battery life etc.

We could take another look at this in due course.

Do you know of any other Apps that keep continuously scanning for NFCs that we could learn from?

Peter

[MichaelRaz]

Peter,
Not sure if this is applicable but I thought the iphone is continuously scanning. I have some NFC chips set up to run automation (change music bluetooth connection etc).  Even when the phone is locked it will read the NFC as soon as near enough and run the action. Understand that Automation is a built in feature so may be handled differently than an app.

[Peter Effeney]

Michael,

Thanks - That sounds interesting. Are you able to provide some more details? (either here or via email to [e-mail]).

Peter

[hoppynet]

Hi Peter,

I believe NFC is always on when screen is on & unlocked.

If you hover the phone over an rfid tag it reads and attempts to open url (using your standard MapRun tag format). You may have to use different (non url) type of tag format but sure code exists out there to do it - not my specialist area 😬.

Not sure this is an improvement on pressing to scan - though swipe unlock or face recognition is maybe easier with wet cold hands?

I expect much more difficult to do if the phone is locked....

Hop

[MichaelRaz]

Just going to close the loop (at least on my end):
After a bit more digging in (and I'm not an Apple developer so I may have this wrong), based on https://developer.apple.com/documentation/corenfc/adding_support_for_background_tag_reading 
there are a number of limitations built in, both when background reading can occur, and how it is handled.  In particular, even if handled as a background scan, this will still pop up the notice to the user "open in xxx?" rather than automatically be available to the app.  The difference being it can recognize specific tags and will offer to open in that specific application, but it does not hand it automatically to the app.  I can understand the security reasons for doing this but it does not help in the MapRun space as the user would still need to click on the screen to accept the tag anyway.  Thus initiating the scan from within maprun may still be the easiest approach, especially as it does not require specialized tag content.

What we need is someone to build a NFC reader with bluetooth (available) that is small and cheap (not available)!

I suspect the situation is different with Android.  I was looking at http://appindesign.com/dib/ that is a QR or NFC simple punching system but GooglePlay only.  Not sure if it is still active but a kinda cool but basic system where the course is read in from a QR or Tag, course is run and results can be collected either through reading a generated QR code or sending through text.

[hoppynet]

I used Dib a good few years back though only with QR codes - that long I had almost forgotten!

If you read the notes on NFC then its the same - needing phone unlocked and screen on..... maybe its Geo-tag or bust (and deal with the moaning in typical RO fashion....)

Only alternate which could help would be using one of the volume buttons (in app) to scan for NFC rather than on screen button.... but not sure worth the effort.

hop

[WithaMap]

Like Hoppynet, I remember using Dib about 3 years ago as well but have forgotten much about it.  Seems like it was hands free but again, that seemed like ages ago so it probably was not.     I will fire up my old android phone and see if I can get it to work again.  Hands free would be the best way for me as I am trying this in an Orienteering Maze where the punches are only seconds apart.  

Bruce

[MichaelRaz]

Okay – I lied – not done yet.  Did some playing (iPhone) to see what could be done with Shortcuts and Accessibility features.  Finicky to set up and needs to have your phone screen open, not to mention battery issues etc etc but here it is (and I suspect there are a few ways to improve this). I won’t go into great detail on each step but in the end product I have set up is, with the screen open and Maprun running in an event, using a voice command will bring MapRun to the front and push the NFC scan button or the QR scan button.  Overall what this does is wraps a voice command around a voice command that runs a shortcut to open MapRun with a voice command to use a gesture (to push the button). Get all that? Note this is with an iPhone 13.

1. Shortcut: Setup a Shortcut to open an app set for Maprun (note an issue below when running 6 and the latest MapRun on the phone).  In my case it is named “Open MapRun”  This is simply to bring MapRun to the screen if not already there.

2. Settings->Accessibility->Customize Commands->Custom->Create New Command.  Now the fun part as you create 5 new Custom Controls:
- Make “Open Map run” with an action to run the shortcut named in (1);

- Make “Scan Tag” with the action to run custom gesture.  Here you are “pushing the Scan NFC button so find some way to mark where it is on the screen when Maprun is up (I used a bit of masking tape).  Note that there is a timer to track how long you push down.  I found that if you just tapped it then when run it would highlight the button in maprun but not “push” it.  Experiment to keep the time as short as possible but still long enough to activate the scan function.

- Finally make “Control Tag” and note the option (when you select “Action” to playback Recorded Commands.  So basically follow the instructions and say (Voice Command must be on I believe) “Start recording commands   open map run   scan tag  stop recording commands”.  Space them out a bit but not too much as this will take added time to function.

- You now repeat b and c for “Scan Code” (that pushes the QR button) and Control Code that wraps the Open Map Run with Scan Code.

3. Now some other bits and pieces.  There are a lot of options that I’m still playing but so far:

- Voice Control options include Show Confirmation and Play Sound which I have turned OFF
- Voice Control is a battery hog so a couple of tricks:

   - At the bottom of the Voice Control Options is “Attention Aware” which wakes up Voice Control only when you look at the phone.  I have this on.
   - At the bottom of the Accessibility options is “Accessibility Shortcut” which can set a triple click of the side button to toggle Voice Commands on/off rather than go through the menu.

So more for fun than practical but I will give it a try to see if it makes things easier.  Scanning does require the phone to be unlocked anyway but this, assuming not too out of breath, could save a couple of steps.  There are other options available to activate automation through tapping the back (which I have never found works well with a case).  The complexity as far as I can tell is the Shortcuts can do somethings but not all and Accessibility can do some things but not all, hence the need to wrap things.

If anyone plays with this and finds any new tricks please post!

Not exciting but here is a screen recorder video of it at work https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-xNqexqZG1JbBJy7X-DcXzoSohRVXMXe/view?usp=sharing