Review
The 100-700-B06 caliper from iGaging is a digital measuring tool that connects via Bluetooth to a smartphone or computer.
Once paired, it functions like a keyboard, entering the measurement value into any application.
For example, Excel or Windows Notepad, the Notes app on iOS, etc.
in case your input method is not the English QWERTY keyboard, you need to add one on your device.
You must switch to the English keyboard before sending the measurement; otherwise, the entered value will not be readable.
On Windows, you can switch keyboards using the Alt-Shift shortcut.
On iPhones, the switch is located in the bottom left corner of the keyboard.
The caliper has five buttons: four small circles below the screen: power, unit, origin, and ABS.
The fifth is a small rectangle on top; this is the data button, used to send the measurement and establish the Bluetooth connection.
To put the caliper into pairing mode, turn it on with the power button and press the data button for about 5-6 seconds.
The next steps depend on your device.
The caliper will not beep. If you are blind, you can check that it is powered on using the beMyAi app or another similar app.
For visually impaired users, the numbers are printed in a fairly large font, but the screen is not very bright.
The caliper will automatically turn off after 5 minutes.
To reconnect it, press and hold the data button for 3 seconds after turning it on with the power button.
The unit button allows you to switch between millimeters and inches, and the origin button resets the value to zero.
By default, even if the caliper jaws are fully closed, it often displays 0.02 mm.
The ABS button toggles the measurement between absolute and incremental when pressed for about 3 seconds.
, the data button near the locking wheel allows you to send the measurement with a short press.
Minor bugs: when the caliper enters the value, it adds a line break; VoiceOver or NVDA only announce the value after the decimal point.
With NVDA in Notepad, simply press the up arrow to read the full value.
With VoiceOver, you need to switch to word-by-word reading mode using the rotor and swipe up.
In short, an accessible and practical measuring tool that allows us to read measurements to the hundredth of a millimeter for : inside, outside, and depth measures.
iGaging offers the same caliper in 100mm and 300mm lengths.
Comments
It's a great caliper
The iOS Calculator app used to accept the enter as an equal command and read the data entry each time you pressed the button without the need for swiping. In some recent update, it stopped working that way. Same goes for the Numbers spreadsheet, which you used to be able to get to read the entry automatically without swiping. I don't know if this is a feature or a bug of iOS that might be changed again in the future, however, using Notes or some other text app does make a record of your entries, and that turns out to be useful in several situations.
Another issue that has come up for me is that the Quick Nav might need to be toggled to text entry with the left and right arrows together on a regular keyboard before the iPhone will accept data from the device. It interprets things in the data from the calipers as a navigation command otherwise.