How to read a magnetic card in android - android

We are developing an android application where user can swipe his/her magnetic card.
We need to parse the information, however there will be two scenarios to capture and handle the card input (we have connected the USB magnetic card reader):
When focus is on Credit Card# textbox and user swipes his/her card we need to parse the information, need to show the card number only in the current focus field and Card Holder Name in another textbox/label.
If our application is running or even if it is not running and user swipes his/her card, we need to capture this information take the user to a particular activity in our application and need to pre-populate the captured information.
Please let us know how to do this in both scenarios.

The MSR100 is a fairly cheap USB HID device. You can get more information, including some setup info here:
http://www.posunitech.com/products_detail/&productId=73.html
I'm fairly certain you can use it like a standard keyboard on android by using a USB OTG cable. Not all devices can use it, but it will essentially let you use many USB devices on Android. With it, you can put your cursor in an EditText field and swipe to get the raw swipe data. From there you could write a listener on the EditText field to pull back the stripe, parse it, and put the data where you want.
If you want better security and less liability, I would go with an encrypted swiper that has EMV/Smart Card capability. IDTech has their UniPay models that do these and are compatible with PC, iOS, & Android.
http://www.idtechproducts.com/products/mobile-readers/176.html

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Is this even Possible to do using BLE and smartphone APP

I've an idea for an App but not sure if it's actually possible to do, any help or advice would be most appreciated.
I would like my APP (BLEAPPX) to open Bluetooth, then list other BLE devices it can 'see' within range. The list would be filtered to ONLY include other devices that had the same BLEAPPX loaded on its device. Is this possible to 'know' that the device has the APP loaded?
I would then like to be able to tap on one of these devices in the list - and assuming the other device does have the same BLEAPPX loaded, to be able to send a request - and have the other device pass back some data - maybe the owners name or App id. In effect - say Hi to someone who also has the same APP loaded and find out who they are.
Can this be done without having to ask the other device to allow Pairing to take place?
Thanks for any help
Phil

How to show image in Bluetooth device list instead of Bluetooth device name.?

In my app I want to show photo and name instead of Bluetooth name without connecting Bluetooth..like shown in image.
There is list of searched Bluetooth device using search button in my app,
By default in list, there is show name of Bluetooth , but I want to show image and name which is in another device's database.How can I do that.? Please give me any example or some way.
Afaik it impossible to advertise so big piece of information as image.
So I see at least 2 possible solutions:
When you see that device first time - show stub-image, but on first connection, first of all pass image and store it somewhere. So on next search you will be able to show other device's image
Use server side, where your app will upload device's image and during bluetooth devices search, it will ask server side if other device's image is already exist and use it

Transfer pictures via NFC

So I am making a project for my android class at school.
The project is about helping handicaped people communicating with a nurse if they can't speak. The solution I've come up with is an app where 24 pictures is combined with 24 sound files which the user then can use to communicate. For example, by taking a picture with a helper and then the nurse records the word on a tablet then when next time the user needs to get an apple he/she just presses the apple on the app and it says apple.
What would optimize this app would be that instead of each user of the app having a tablet, the nurse only has one. Then when entering the house of a user he/she can by scanning a NFC chip, get the pictures and sound files into the app belonging to that person.
So here's the question. Can this be done by combining a NFC chip with some sort of SD card solution or will this have to be done by the chip returning for example an URL with some sort of user parameter getting the pictures and soundfiles by using an internet connection?
So is there some storage thing you can put together with an nfc chip that could make this posible?

Is it posible in Android to allows the phone to have two unlock pin codes?

What I would like to do is create an app on the Android that allows the following:
Allows the phone to have two unlock pin codes. One unlock code will the the master "normal" code. The second unlock code will allow the user to receive and send texts, make and receive phone calls, store pictures, and contacts that will not show up in the "normal" screen.
You cannot do this with an app. Apps cannot change system behaviour unless they are 'system administrator' apps. Even those cannot do such fine grained control, only impose restrictions on unlock code strength, camera use and device encryption. As others have noted, Android 4.2 supports multiple users (on tablets only), which gives you a separate unlock code for each user. Additionally, some operations that affect the whole device, such as adding new users, adding or removing trusted certificates, accessing the secure element, etc. are reserved for the first/primary user. You can't place calls with a tablet though, so multiple users doesn't really apply to calling/SMS.

NFC communication: What happends when an NFC enabled phone comes in contact with a tag?

I have been reading information on NFC but could not find exact process or sequence of steps that happens when an NFC mobile phone comes in contact with an NFC tag?
In more detail i got to know how the antenna, coil etc generate the magnetic field and how data is transferred, but i want to know
whether any handshaking happens in the first stage?
Or What data is transferred between 2 NFC enabled phones before the actual sharing of a photo or any information happens.
Thanks in advance.
For explanation purposes, lets say the actual hardware communication of magnetic field generation, etc. etc. is the hardware layer of communication.
On the android OS layer, there is something called NfcManager ( a service ) that runs in the background when you enable "Nfc" settings. This service is responsible for converting the raw byte data that is received from the below layers, which could be the kernel or the hardware layer, depending on how you look at it.
Once the service picks it up, this link should give you a basic idea as to how it is pushed into the application!
As far as 2 NFC phones go, this is not an extremely informed opinion, but im guessing from sheer experience. In the case of a data that needs to be sent below a certain quantity, there is no "pairing" that happens. It identifies the other 2nd NFC device and simply sends out data. In the case of photos or anything larger, i would assume it pairs it using Bluetooth and sends out the data.

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