External keyboard (barcode scanner)

[f_lombardo]

Hi all.

Is it possible in Android 4.0.4 to use both an external keyboard (in my case an external USB barcode scanner) and the onscreen one concurrently?

Thanks a lot.

Bye

Franco

 

[Digital Controller]

Welcome to the forums

Hey Franco I have moved this thread into the Android Accessories forum as I thought it could be better answered here. Hope this helps

 

[Nexus5]

Android, like most computers, doesn't switch between it's input devices, listening to only one or the other.

So you could touch the screen, or click with a mouse, at the same time.

If you had a physical keyboard and an on-screen keyboard in use at the same time the ONLY limitation would be if the software 'hides' the on-screen keyboard upon reception of input from a 'keyboard device'.

In fact in my testing with 4.2.1 it's too smart, and it isn't offering the on-screen keyboard at all now. *grumble* .. Now you made me notice and I have to go fix that!

UPDATE: Do not remove the keyboard via device exclusion in excluded-input-devices.xml .. This becomes tricky later on when you want to undo it and the general advice that it doesn't disable the device is WRONG.