Help Downloading data from multiple tablets?

[Downloading data]

Hi all, hoping that someone a lot smarter than me can help me with a question.

My team are looking at developing an app for the resource industry that will record movement information across a large number of fleet (e.g. 50 machines, 1 tablet for each). As assets are never in the nicest locations, there is no cell/mobile coverage and the area is too large to be covered by wifi.

At the end of each shift (2x12 hour shifts per day), the data captured by the app will need to make it into our database. With wifi, this would be relatively easy. However, the only other way I can see this happening (and hopefully I am wrong..) is that 50 microSD cards are taken to a central area and downloaded. The tablets themselves will need to remain with each machine for the oncoming shift which will insert an additional SD card.

My questions are:
1. Is there a smarter way to download data from all these tablets in this scenario?
2. Is there a product that will allow ~50 microSD cards to be inserted and then the information is dowloaded automatically?

 

[Crashdamage]

1. There's a number of apps in the Play store for doing file transfers over WiFi. Airdroid (which can do much more), Portal, at least a half dozen named WiFi Transfer, etc. Just do a search for 'WiFi file' in the Play store.

You could setup cloud-based storage and automate uploads to it at the end of shifts. You're could do fully automatic scheduled uploads or manual uploads with a couple of taps. Easy enough for your drivers to do. Then you can pull down the data from the cloud whenever you want or have it sync automatically to your workstations or server. IOW, the tablets do automatic or tap-tap uploads and it all syncs automatically to your computers. You could use most any cloud storage like Google Drive or Dropbox and install FolderSync on the tablets for uploads.

2. See above. No need to do all that fooling around with SD cards.

BTW, curious...why fool around with SD cards at all? They're not terribly reliable, especially if you physically handle them that much.

 

[Jfalls63]

Large area where I work. All of our machines communicate with uhf radio modem with repeaters throughout site. Could be worth looking into. PLC's transmitting receiving data.