bulk iPad serial number

[William Hamilton]

Kia ora, I have a bunch of iPads that I need to grab serial numbers from.  I used to have an Apple Automator script which would do this but this but I recall Apple blocking serial number retrieval a while back, anyway "GetSerialNumber" looks to no longer be an Automator action.

Anyone know of a tool where I can connect a bunch of iPads to a USB hub and grab all of the Serial Numbers and paste into a list/cs/Excel/Numbers?

tia

W

[Jeffrey Burke]

Plug them all in to a Mac running configurator and export the list may work.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/apple-configurator/id1588794674 

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From: techies-f...@googlegroups.com <techies-f...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of William Hamilton <william....@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, December 20, 2023 8:45:48 AM
To: techies-f...@googlegroups.com <techies-f...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [techies-for-schools] bulk iPad serial number

 

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[William Hamilton]

Thanks Jefferey, that may be the process I use.

cheers

W

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[William Hamilton]

as a quick followup - I also tried "Shortcuts" but did not find confuurator as an option on my install, Apple docs show it as available BUT the export function does not look to be exposed.

Manual export as suggested by Jefferey is the way for me at the moment.  I have attached a script which will take the output from the export and appends serial numbers to a tracking file for use later. (may or may not be of use to folks here)

cheers

W

[Blake Richardson]

I take it you are not using an MDM. Maybe have a look at something like Jamf School which will allow you to centrally manage iPads and export such information. It's fairly inexpensive otherwise do you list devices in an asset register which you could pull the serial numbers from?

[William Hamilton]

Kia ora Blake, using Jamf School at this school already (I have set up at a few other schools... i love it, and that is not just the reseller in me talking :) ).  

This process is in part to make sure devices can tick off as they are "physically checked in".  Use these details to tick off against the leased and school owned lists, confirm they are returned to the correct location etc.  I also have a similar thing to do with Chromebooks over the break and am considering doing some Ducky Script automations to make life a bit easier when sitting in front of a few hundred devices to remove then replace..

The original automator script was created for a school who were barcoding all of their iPads, I "automated" this for them...  plug in iPad(s) and print out barcodes based upon the serial number of each device.  I had Jamf School display the serial number on the screen for when they were doing multiple devices at once to make it easier to identify.

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

W

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[Pete Mundy]

In the good old days you could have reconciled a list of associated MAC
addresses from the nearest WLAN radio to your JamF School list and
picked off a good few of the serials that way at least! But now days
"privacy addresses" at layer II are putting a stop to that sort of
malarky... <sigh>

Best suggestion I can come up with is to set the lock screen message to
the serial number (or asset ID) via profile in JamF School. At least
that way you only have to wake the screen with a home-button press and
the number is right there on screen in big easy to read text.

(throw in a Raspberry Pi with a USB cam on a tripod and some openCV
software and maybe something could be automated! :)

Pete

>>>>> ------------------------------
>>>>> *From:* techies-f...@googlegroups.com <techies-f...@googlegroups.com>

>>>>> on behalf of William Hamilton <william....@gmail.com>

>>>>> *Sent:* Wednesday, December 20, 2023 8:45:48 AM
>>>>> *To:* techies-f...@googlegroups.com <techies-f...@googlegroups.com>
>>>>> *Subject:* [techies-for-schools] bulk iPad serial number

>>>>>
>>>>> Kia ora, I have a bunch of iPads that I need to grab serial numbers
>>>>> from. I used to have an Apple Automator script which would do this but
>>>>> this but I recall Apple blocking serial number retrieval a while back,
>>>>> anyway "GetSerialNumber" looks to no longer be an Automator action.
>>>>>
>>>>> Anyone know of a tool where I can connect a bunch of iPads to a USB hub
>>>>> and grab all of the Serial Numbers and paste into a list/cs/Excel/Numbers?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> tia
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> W
>>>>>
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[William Hamilton]

Who can afford raspberry Pis these days Pete!  

For the moment I will work with ---- Configurator to export batches of iPad details, Python script to read this file, update a Google sheet and indicate which are leased and which are owned so that they can be appropriately dealt with as we go.  In the end I will have a list of devices which have been physically dealt with and confirmed lists of leased/owned devices which have been handed in etc.  I changed my thinking from updating an Excel workbook (previously attached script) to Google Sheet as it should be easier to have multiple people updating and monitoring.  Although it has been a few years since I have done any Google Sheets automation with Python, fingers crossed it has not changed much.  gsheet was the library that I used last time.  I have not done any automating with online Excel, and this school is a Google shop anyway.

W

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[Pete Mundy]

I still have that gsheet library in active use in a few places - you
should be good to go on that front :)

[William Hamilton]

FYI on this one..

Export info via Configurator was great - I was able to get 16 devices reliably connected via a couple of hubs which was magic.

The script I used is attached - quick and dirty and not well documented but "works on my machine" :). May be of use for others.

Read the CSV export from Apple Configurator, append the iPad details to a sheet, checking if the serial number exists in another sheet, marking it if so.  If not in this existing list I reboot the device (using https://github.com/libimobiledevice/libimobiledevice) so that it is easier to find.  We used this to split school owned and leased devices.

W

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