PDA team are now working on reducing the number of button presses to complete tasks

[Acca Dacca]

They are absolutely USELESS in the rain

[glenfiddich]

i wish the screen would stop dimming whilst I'm waiting at doors as it takes ages to brighten up again so I can see what I'm doing

[WalkerX]

i wish the screen would stop dimming whilst I'm waiting at doors as it takes ages to brighten up again so I can see what I'm doing

Good point.

[POSTMAN]

PDA Person

Hi all thanks for you feedback on this, the use of the PDA in extreme wet weather is an issue we have been looking into with Zebra.
The screens on the TC57 are much more durable in the wet weather then the old TC75 PDAs we have seen this in some of the testing that has been conducted.

However there will be a point in heavy rain where any device be it a PDA or phone will have difficulty. Having said this we have been working with Zebra (PDA manufacture) to better understand what's happing, what we have found is that large droplets of rain act as if there is a touch on the screen and hence any other action is not recognised.

As a result of this we have a change in configuration we are looking to test in a number of sites in the next few days this will allow us to understand the actions we need to take to improve wet weather performance further.

We are looking at the removal of the swipe up action (planned for Feb) which will also help.

Before we started the deployment of the new PDAs, we arranged for them to be tested. The test concluded that having the screen proctors on the PDAs actually improved the performance of the PDA use in wet weather conditions. Also the screen protector is core in protecting the PDA against accidental damage, hence I do not recommend the removal of the screen proctor.

[HTPostman]

Maybe I’m becoming institutionalised but I’m generally excited about not having to swipe up each time.

Perhaps they can go for a double whammy and lock the adhoc screen and report an incident screen so it doesn’t keep going onto that.

[SpacePhoenix]

The thing they should have had included when they ordered them is a sliding switch which when "on" the PDA would ignore any input from the touchscreen

[postieblueshirt]

I know this means nothing but if you have been in argos lately or asda it's the same pda just different software.so there made for indoor work I'd say,although asda home shopping pickers have finger scanners too lucky buggers.and why after all these years do they not charge in the Van's why the mind boggles....

[2yearpostie]

Why didnt they keep the old pdas as 'indoor pdas' and then have the new ones just as 'outdoor pdas' with no other function but outdoor and ron. No adhoc nonsense as they could have been done on the old ones when we got back.

[ronaldinho0097]

Instead of a touch screen, actual physical buttons would be hugely better and would save a whole lot of hassle and time, especially in the rain.

[no1postie]

yes they are crap, but the first thing i do when getting hold of said crap is remove the battery and reboot. may or may not help but seems to help me. they are using a google android operating system which i do prefer anyway, but probably not big enough ram chips (random access memory) to do the job. maybe a move to apple i phone operating system would be better suited , but way too expensive. also i have a colleage who "re-sets" his PDA by repeatedly banging the device on his desk, might be worth a try ? and don't forget to sanitise before and after use.

[ssdd]

PDA Person

As a result of this we have a change in configuration we are looking to test in a number of sites in the next few days this will allow us to understand the actions we need to take to improve wet weather performance further.

We are looking at the removal of the swipe up action (planned for Feb) which will also help.

I'm guessing it'll something similar to this: https://blog.junipersys.com/mesa-2-touc ... onditions/

"Wet Profile
Best for wet environments

By simply switching on the wet profile, users are able to use the Mesa 2 without false touches triggered by water droplets. With the wet profile switched on, the Mesa 2 touch screen recognizes a fingertip or the extreme-weather fat-tip stylus apart from water droplets and responds appropriately. We recommend that the wet profile be activated whenever the user is working in a wet environment."

Good news on the swipe removal!

[Pumpernickel]

PDA Person

Hi all thanks for you feedback on this, the use of the PDA in extreme wet weather is an issue we have been looking into with Zebra.
The screens on the TC57 are much more durable in the wet weather then the old TC75 PDAs we have seen this in some of the testing that has been conducted.

However there will be a point in heavy rain where any device be it a PDA or phone will have difficulty. Having said this we have been working with Zebra (PDA manufacture) to better understand what's happing, what we have found is that large droplets of rain act as if there is a touch on the screen and hence any other action is not recognised.

So they think it's only "heavy" or "extreme" rain that renders them useless?

Even light rain for a prolongued period makes the screen unusable. Have they tried using a wet PDA for more than a few minutes like we have to?

The screen locks up (thinking a drop is a press), so you sleep it, then unsleep and it won't swipe, or you get a single registered press (not necessarily registering where you press) before having to sleep and swipe again.

Honestly the previous PDAs were much better in wet weather (though still not great).

[sorefeet17]

They are way too sensitive in any rain
The other problem I have constantly is when I go to scan the screen jumps back one step, then I have to select outdoor delivery again to get back to the scan screen, I think this is because the smaller buttons on the side must have been pressed by accident, they need to disable those buttons when in scan mode.

[Mr Rush]

what we have found is that large droplets of rain act as if there is a touch on the screen

'act as if'? Things touching the touchscreen are registered as touches on the touchscreen. That's what you get with touchscreens instead of buttons. But there are very few buttons on cheap commodity hardware these days because all the savings are made in offshoring software development. Same reason car radio and climate controls are now completely inappropriate touchscreens instead of being like aviation MFDs with configurable buttons.

[POSTMAN]

Zebra 'Sold the £70M of s**t as seen' dude
So I'm from zebra, we're here at Stanmore DO basically looking at the new PDA's seeing whether there are some improvements we can make to those since the rollout has gone out.

Since we finish the rollout, we've been out talking to people in the field getting feedback from the users. and the predominant feedback has been really, really positive.

The one thing we have been hearing though and one thing we focusing on is in a kind of extreme weather.
We're still having some challenges with the screen and the sensitivity of it.

So we're working on a couple of different activities.

So first off, what you'll notice on the devices is, there is a screen protector covering natural glass screens.

That's there to help protect the device. so we don't get any scratches and damages to the screen.

But what we're looking at is how that impacts the sensitivity of the screen, especially in wet weather.

So what we're doing at the moment is we're testing a couple of different screen protectors.

We're doing that in a couple of ways. actually, in stanmore here we've swopped out screen protectors on some of the devices to give us a real side by side comparison.
And then we're doing some simulated wet weather testing in our lab environment. in new york.

PDA Project 'Does it still rain on the posties?' Manager
We started the PDA rollout in July. it was completed in September for royal mail, so the PDA has a number of screen configuration settings that we can have.

Right now. we have a setting that allowes use to use our finger and stylus. what we found is by changing that setting to finger only it reduces the sensitivity of that of the screen. and then, then it works much better in that wet weather situation.

In Feb, we are looking to deploy new release to the RM PDA, the release consists of a number of fixes and enhancements.

Five main changes

Changes to photo catch on delivery, one of them, we're removing the swipe up screen to unlock the PDA.

We're adding in the phone number to the PDA, so people know what the phone number is.

And also turning off the auto brightness

We're also reintroducing the rotation for the customer signature

pda new.gif

Zebra 'We never tested them in wet weather before'' dude
Coming up in the next couple months, we're rolling out a new zebra managed service for the PDS.
What that means is we are able to collect a lot more data on the performance of devices.
We can collect that remotely, so we can give a more proactive service out to the users, and it would just help you get the very best out of your device.