Author Topic: Club Equipment  (Read 7155 times)

Mirna

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Club Equipment
« on: May 03, 2017, 17:51:16 »
Chislehurst Bridge Club Nov 2011 - May 2017
Lots of Samsung Galaxy Europas, 5-6 years old, 2.8 inch glass screen, refuse to go wrong, they were £39.99 from Carphone Warehouse in 2011. Needed a tweak to Android (2.2) to stop phone from freezing. Some members think the screen is too small, some think it is fine. All in gel/leather cases, no screen protectors.
A number of Alcatel Pixi 4 4inch. Nice and shiny with gel cases and glass screen protectors. One for £10 special offer from O2, others £20 from EE and £25 from Tesco (both Black Friday offer 2016), several at £23 from Currys PC World seconds shop (March to May 2017) on eBay. Nice size.
One Nexus 4, my old mobile phone, 4.7inch. Nice size.
A 7inch LG tablet v400. Android v5. I think it takes too much space on the table. 4-5 inch screen is better.
A few small LG L20s. I was thinking of giving them away, as the screen was too small and it wouldn't quite fit. John's new software now scales the screen, so it all fits. Font is small but the phone fits in the palm of my hand. The great thing about them is the battery life - it uses about 5% of battery per session.
Battery life - on Galaxies and Pixis - can be used for three to four club sessions, run them with 1 minute display timeout.
An old Asus router, RT-N12B, John bought 3 for £10 each and flashed them with third party dd-wrt firmware. Serves one room of up to 24 tables and a small side room of up to 4 tables. Talks to laptop over wireless. Pinned on the notice board. See attachment.
When uploading results to BridgeWebs, just unplug the router and turn on my mobile hotspot. Laptop automatically connects to this and the results are on BridgeWebs within 15 minutes of the end of game. In time for the pub postmortem.
Laptop, second from 2011, first Acer didn't survive dropping on the floor. Current one is HP Stream 14, solid state disk, nice, light and compact.
2 x 10 port Anker chargers, got them on sale for £20 each. A bit of a luxury, but a huge improvement over the extension leads. All phones fit nicely on a dining room chair when charging.
A box of screen wipes at hand, I like to hand them out clean and not with fingerprints from the last session.
Oh yes, some stylus pens, very few used, 3 - 4.
Recently acquired (Sep 2017) a 5 inch Alcatel POP 4 as used in Mountnessing. Nice size, screen has wider angle than Pixi 4s - better for viewing around the table. Battery life excellent. Twice the price of Pixi 4.

UPDATE:
Our little Galaxy Europas are retiring now - going to a charity for recycling. We acquired more Alcatel POP 4s all second hand mostly from ebay Tesco store.

We now use Caffeine app to prolong battery life. You can download it from here:
https://apkpure.com/caffeine/nl.syntaxa.caffeine

UPDATE:
When using hotspot for upload to Bridgewebs, it is important to point out that the hotspot connection is set as 'metered connection' to avoid any Windows updates mopping up my mobile allowance.
« Last Edit: February 22, 2020, 17:19:39 by Mirna »

Mirna

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Re: Club Equipment
« Reply #1 on: October 24, 2017, 11:16:32 »
Chelmsford Bridge Club Nov 2016

We use 12x Alcatel 5017x sim only phones, which
are excellent! Screen size ideal - 4.5 inch . They Use approx 30% to 35% per
session (have taken all other apps off). Downside can't change battery
(not necessarily true) but expecting them to last a few years given our
usage v usage if they were being used as phones. We also bought on Amazon a
10 port USB charger and then replaced the long USB charging cables with 10
'micro USB cables' (£3 from eBay) not necessary but found they made it a much
neater/easier charging system.
« Last Edit: October 24, 2017, 11:21:09 by Mirna »

Mirna

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Re: Club Equipment
« Reply #2 on: October 24, 2017, 11:18:37 »
Oxted Bridge Club Jan 2017

Alcatel Pixi 4, with sim cards. 10 minutes display timeout.
Some user iPads
Router NetGear N300 Model WNR2000 from Maplin

Mirna

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Re: Club Equipment
« Reply #3 on: October 24, 2017, 11:20:42 »
Ballymena Bridge Club - Feb 2017

Thank you so much for making this system available to all. As a small club we could never afford the commercial systems. I also like the web page of results it produces as I provide a web site so as our users can check the details of their playing.
We had our first real test last week and it highlighted a few problems,
1/ Need to set display on the PC on mains supply to be 100% on throughout the session.
2/ To save time, switch on phones before I leave home.  I also removed all of the icons from the front screen of the phones except for the BridgePal icon
3/ Better train our inexperienced (Tech Phobic) users, though most users had no problems at all
I managed to get a mobile phone from EE for £25 then discovered that I could get 5 more for £21 each from ASDA
Our total cost was as follows:-
Cost of Wireless Bridge Scoring
 
No of Items           Item Cost
1  EE Phone            £25.00
5  Asda Phones        £105.00
1 Wireless router      £0.00
 
10 Stylus                £3.99
5 Phone Gloves        £9.99
1 Phone Glove         £0.00
1 6 Socket extension £7.99
                    Total £151.97

Mirna

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Re: Club Equipment
« Reply #4 on: October 24, 2017, 11:21:59 »
Otford Bridge Club  - May 2017

Alcatel Pixi 4 (4), from Tesco @ £25 and from EE @ £20 (Black Friday offer 2016), removed all icons except BridgePal
Old Acer laptop with Windows 7, uninstalled AVG, installed Windows Defender (no regular disk scans), disabled automatic updates. Removed everything from Desktop except BridgeScore and BridgePal Broadcast.  TalkTalk Super Router HG533 acquired for free. Talks to laptop over wireless.

Mirna

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Re: Club Equipment
« Reply #5 on: October 24, 2017, 11:22:55 »
Felsted Bridge Club  - May 2017

The equipment we bought (for 12 tables plus 3 spare) - Huawei 4" Y3 4GB smartphones (new) £35.97 each.
Refurbished Dell Latitude E4200 12" laptop (very fast) £89.99, plus 8 port charger and leads and protective cases for phones.
We deleted everything other than BridgePal/BridgeScore off phones and laptop so nobody can fiddle about with them.
We find a few preferred to use a stylus on the phones but most were happy using fingers.
We also have one phone (£10 PAYG) set up for anyone who will be late arriving to let TD know (to obviate changing movements at last minute.

Mirna

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Re: Club Equipment
« Reply #6 on: October 24, 2017, 11:24:01 »
St Julian's Bridge Club  - June 2017

Money for the equipment mostly raised from player ID auction.
HP 14-an060 14" laptop.
22 Tesco's Alcatel Pixi 4 4 inch at £29 each, all dressed in black gel cases and shiny glass screen protectors. Smart aluminium carry case.
TalkTalk Super Router HG533 acquired for free.
6 port circular usb chargers.
Decision to go for BridgePals made at the end of May 2017, system live and working a month later. Very well organised.
First session of 14 1/2 tables went without any problems, without any previous training, played fewer boards than usual to allow for familiarisation.
Subsequent session was back to normal number of boards.
« Last Edit: October 24, 2017, 11:26:27 by Mirna »

Mirna

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Re: Club Equipment
« Reply #7 on: October 24, 2017, 11:25:17 »
Mountnessing Bridge Club - update July 2017

Cheap Chinese tablets replaced with 12 x  Alcatel-POP-4-Smart-Phone-Slate-Grey-8GB-5-HD-Android-6-0-Unlocked-Sim-Free from Tesco eBay store at£45 each.
They have an amazing battery life, they last for 3 sessions with display always on. See what Alaric says here -http://mirgo2.co.uk/bridgepal_forum/index.php?topic=41.0 and here - http://mirgo2.co.uk/bridgepal_forum/index.php?topic=42.0
« Last Edit: October 24, 2017, 11:30:53 by Mirna »

Mirna

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Re: Club Equipment
« Reply #8 on: November 29, 2017, 22:05:14 »
Clubs in Mid Wales

In Mid Wales we now have eleven Alcatel Pixi4 in use, plus six BT Flame 7inch tablets, plus ten Aigo 6inch tablets. We are using Belkin G wireless routers bought off Ebay for a few pounds and they are working perfectly.
The ten Aigo tablets have now been updated with the latest app 1.5.3 and it will be interesting to see whether our users prefer the phones or tablets as some had found the flip of the screen for viewing traveller disconcerting on the tablets.
I have six more 7inch tablets on their way for supply to Cardigan Bridge Club.

Tablets and Pixi4 have silicone back covers, with the phones having tempered glass screen protectors.

See original post here
« Last Edit: November 29, 2017, 22:08:41 by Mirna »