IONIC Keyboard hide on input focus

I'm writing an Ionic app that will be used for logistic purposes in the Healthcare sector.
The devices that will be used for this app have a build-in barcode scanner and run on android 4.1.1.
This scanner inputs data within a input field and submits it by pressing the "enter" key. Due to the scanner being the my "keyboard" in certain situations I want to hide the keyboard on input focus or click.

I wrote the following directive using the ionic keyboard cordova plugin:

directives.directive("showKeyboard", [
function()  {
    var linkFn = function(scope, element, attrs) {
        console.log(scope);
        console.log(element);
        console.log(attrs);
        if(!window.cordova || !window.cordova.plugins.Keyboard) return; // Check for cordova keyboard plugin

        if(element[0].nodeName.toLowerCase() != 'input') return; // check for input

        if(attrs.type.toLowerCase() != 'password' && attrs.type.toLowerCase() != 'text') return; // check for type of input

        element.bind("focus click",
            function(e) {
                e.preventDefault();
                if(scope.$eval(attrs.showKeyboard)){
                    console.log('show')
                    window.cordova.plugins.Keyboard.show();
                }
                else    {
                    console.log('hide');
                    cordova.plugins.Keyboard.close();

                }
            }
        );
    };

    var keyboardDirective = {
        restrict : 'A',
        link: linkFn
    };

    return keyboardDirective;

}
]);

Function seems to work. Only the keyboard won't close and seems to be "forced" to open by the device.

any suggestions?

I tried using your directive to suppress the default native keyboard in order to show an alternative keyboard and found that I had to use a $timout of 100ms before calling hide for the keyboard to close (to work around the race condition). However, it's creating a flicker artifact so it's not the best solution. Another idea which I haven't yet tried is to suppress they keyboard on the Android side in Java via a custom plugin which would call,

InputMethodManager imm = (InputMethodManager) activity.getSystemService(Context.INPUT_METHOD_SERVICE);

imm.hideSoftInputFromWindow(activity.getCurrentFocus().getWindowToken(), 0);