Ipads won't 'Bluetooth' each other.

[King Herald]

I have two identical iPads, and set them up to try and Bluetooth to each other. They have both been turned on, both say 'available', both say 'searching for devices', but nothing more happens.

Anything else I need to do anything else, turn on WiFi, location or anything? we don't have WiFi out on my ship.

And if i can get them to see each other, can I move stuff back and forth or is it locked up in the usual apple/iTunes complexities?

[eybic]

I don't think you can transfer stuff between them via bluetooth.

[Lost soul]

My iphone and ipad are the same , they never find any other devices apart from the phone finding my car

[devnull]

Firstly, what are you trying to transfer?
Secondly, are these recent iPads?

You can use the airdrop functionality to achieve this:

http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204144

[JamieBeeston]

Airdrop is what you want.

[King Herald]

I'm not actually trying to transfer anything yet, just playing with them to see what can be achieved by Bluetooth. If it worked, then I would have had a go at transferring maybe books, between kindle apps, or maybe even video between player apps.

I assume Airdrop uses wifi to transfer stuff, which is no good to me here as we have no wifi on my ship. Our satellite connection is also so slow I can't even open the Airdrop link.....feel my pain....

[sawman]

you could pick up a wireless media drive. We have a sandisk media drive and when on long trips the kids can connect their ipads to it to watch movies, it effectively makes a little wifi network (not internet) - they can network games, like minecraft. plus all the media is on the sandisk rather than clogging up the ipads which is helpful

[ecsrobin]

AirDrop is only with more recent devices and it doesn't need a wifi connection but it does need wifi and Bluetooth turned on. When both devices have wifi and Bluetooth turned on you can then transfer images, videos, websites and not much else.

[King Herald]

Mine are iPad 2's, just one is newer and bigger than t'other. I didn't see anything about Airdrop anywhere in the menus.

I think one is dying, the display keeps stuttering and playing up, so I was thinking i could transfer stuff across to the new one if necessary. I'll experiment more later on.

[supersport]

The 2s don't do airdrop. The blue tooth us for devics like keyboards only. Bizarre but true.

[HewManHeMan]

There's no Bluetooth file transfer between Apple stuff. At least, there wasn't when I first bought into the iPhone 3 all those years ago. Was something of a policy, apparently (although I understand some apps worked their way around this? 'Bump'?! Or something like that)

At the time I thought it was batst, but then I realised there were so many other (easier) ways of transferring 'stuff' it wasn't such an issue.

[King Herald]

Easier ways to transfer stuff, all involving a computer and iTunes, no doubt?

[HewManHeMan]

King Herald said:

Easier ways to transfer stuff, all involving a computer and iTunes, no doubt?

Well, email.

Although I get that phones used to be (and Android probably still is) more open to tinkering with, and having blue teeth would be a help. Maybe I've just lost habit of tinkering with stuff!

[telford_mike]

King Herald said:

Easier ways to transfer stuff, all involving a computer and iTunes, no doubt?

Just put dropbox on both of them.

[ecsrobin]

telford_mike said:

King Herald said:

Easier ways to transfer stuff, all involving a computer and iTunes, no doubt?

Just put dropbox on both of them.

Except the OP is at sea with limited internet.

[King Herald]

ecsrobin said:

Except the OP is at sea with limited internet.

And no Wi-Fi either.

[ZesPak]

Basically, you're forked without any external hardware iirc.

Most, if not all, apps you'll find will require a WiFi network or even internet. I don't know of one that'll allow peer to peer direct transfer.

As above, the ipads have a limited bluetooth stacks and it'll be near impossible to do it that way. My best guess will be to have some sort of wifi AP, then get an app that allows wifi transfer without having internet.
Airdrop would be a possibility, but it's only available since the iPad 4 (not even the iPad 3, which is odd tbh...).

[sgrimshaw]

King Herald said:

And no Wi-Fi either.

Best solution is to get a device which will create your own wifi network.

Something like this also has sharing to USB built in

http://www.amazon.co.uk/HooToo-TripMate-Portable-W...

Lots of similar devices available.

Until you hit port though .... if someone has a laptop then download connectify.

This can create a wireless network using the wireless network card in the laptop.

[mojitomax]

Will an iPhone with hotspot work as a device to create a wifi network?

Obviously won't be able to connect to the Internet but may provide an adhoc wifi network?

[ZesPak]

mojitomax said:

Will an iPhone with hotspot work as a device to create a wifi network?

Obviously won't be able to connect to the Internet but may provide an adhoc wifi network?

We've tested this with an iPhone 4S once, but the results were disappointing, the ipads didn't really see each other as being in the same network, all the iPhone did was basically act like a modem for both ipads separately, if that makes sense.