How many types of base stations do you offer?
What to look for: More is more in this case! The type of base station can impact performance and range. It can even impact WIFI speeds!
What is the range for your base station?
What to look for: Keypad range is often boasted; however, if the base station doesn’t have the range to pick up on their signals or cannot be moved into the optimum position, the range will never be what was expected. This would cause transmission time to slow significantly or prevent the system from collecting all of the votes. Avoid USB stick base stations for large or important meetings or meetings near large amounts of WIFI interference.
Does the system have FHSS?
What to look for: This allows the system to scan for the frequency with the least traffic or interference to get the most accurate and fastest data! FHSS stands for Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum and it is completely safe if the system implements a secure algorithm to facilitate the channel jumping.
Does the system offer two-way confirmations?
What to look for: This is critical! Two-way confermation helps to ensure that each vote is received. With this, a keypad, like the G4, will show a “sent” message on the display when the user submits his or her vote. Then, the base station sends a “received” message back to the keypad for display once the vote has been counted. If the user did not get a “received” message, he or she knows to try again so that the results are fair and accurate!
How many choices will the keypad support?
What to look for: What is being asked? Many times there may be more than 4 or 5 choices to answer a question. In this case, users obviously need to use a keypad with more than five answer buttons.
Does it allow multi-digit responses? Does it have a display?
What to look for: Will the users be asked to rank preferences? They will need to be able to enter multiple digits for their response. Additionally, this is a situation that would require a display to allow users to see and remember what they have entered thus far. Some surveys won't require this and a small, but powerful keypad is the optimal way to go for the sake of efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Every keypad is different! Don’t limit the question opportunities. Decide on a format and, then, find the system that fits!
