I have an Arduino device connected through USB to the Android smartphone.
Is it possible to get the mobile's IMEI without routing it using my Arduino board?
By default I hope not, or else it would be a security issue.
The Android device controls what information is shared with the attached device.
You can probably create an Android app that will detect a plugged Arduino device in a special way and share that information (write it to USB from the app). In this case you have to install and run this app first on the mobile phone.
If you don't have an app, you can probably pretend that Arduino is a "debugger device" (like a PC with a debugging driver), and then the Android OS will ask if you trust it or not, and then can issue debugger commands from Arduino. That's much more complicated, because such drivers differ between manufacturers.
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I am creating an app (running in USB accessory mode) that will recognise when a specially made device (that I am also working on) is plugged in and connect to it.
I have written code in the app for this recognition to happen but now need to test it and the specially made device is not made yet.
So, I was wanting to test my app by somehow setting my PC up to be recognised as a usb host device that my phone can connect to, I spent a long time googling and looking for a way to do this or a different way to test this but came up empty.
How do I set my PC up in this way to test my app or what would be a good way to test this automatic usb connecting?
Thank you kindly,
EDIT:
Even the name of a cheap device that runs in android usb host mode would be sufficient as I could still just plug that into my device to check if it is working.
I think your question is how to emulate USB Host mode with the Emulator and setting up a bridge with an emulated device on the PC. This is not possible (yet).
See Emulator documentation. In the "What's not supported section" it is said that virtual hardware is not supported for USB.
I found the USB docs for Android and from there it seems as if one could write a communication program on an Android phone that works exactly like on a PC.
I have a normal USB-cable that normally connects between a PC and an external device. On one end it is a normal USB on the other end it has a special plug for the device.
If I get an USB female-female adapter I could connect my normal Android phone cable USB end to my device USB cable and so basically plug in my special USB cable into the Android phone.
Does anyone have experience doing USB communcation programming on Android - basically copying normal PC USB functionality? All I would have to do is sent and receive text strings over the USB port - just like on a PC.
Is this possible or is the USB port programming on Android limited in any way
and not really identical to USB programming on a PC? eg. power supply through USB or anything else?
ps on the PC I need to have a FTDI driver installed to work with the external device.
Many thanks
UPDATE:
it seems that starting with Android 3.1 it is possible to do this - however, if I understand htis correctly, Android 3.1 runs only on tablet Android devices - I might be wrong with this - compared to Apple this all this pretty confusing (however, with Apple iPhone it will never work! ;)
Yes, Android supports USB host on 3.1 and newer, so you can connect USB devices directly to an Android device using a converter cable. Android 4.0 brings this feature to handset devices.
Does anyone know how to configure an Android device (tablet) to appear as a USB HID device when connected to a PC?
Is there any other way of getting data from the tablet to the PC (via USB) other than writing it to a file, and have the PC retrieve the (updated) file from the tablet which is acting as a 'mass storage device' for the PC?
Can USB carry a TCP/IP end-end connection?
Using a tablet as a high-end intelligent 'keyboard' or 'mouse' or similar device would be immensely powerful, and open up lots of possibilities. Controlling a model railway layout is the end I have in mind.
Thanks
It's possible to do this using the linux gadget framework http://www.linux-usb.org/gadget/ using a custom composite USB device. The gadget framework is part of the Android kernel source tree by inheritance from Linux.
Unfortunately, Android has its own customizations that restrict the ability to dynamically register new USB gadgets so you will need to patch the kernel source tree for your particular device and add your HID gadget (otherwise you could create a module and load it that way) to the supported Android list.
I have done this before and will update this answer to contain more detail if there is interest. Unfortunately I lost the code so I will have to start from scratch.
If I set up a web server on my phone and enable usb tethering, I can access that server from my PC. If that's not enough for you, this might help: https://market.android.com/details?id=usbwebcam.application&hl=en
I'm running cyanogenmod on a Desire CDMA (BravoC)
Let me know what you find out; it would be pretty handy to use my phone as a USB keyboard in the field. An android server with a PC client is gonna be easiest though.
Have a look at Android Open Accessory Protocol 2.0. This could help you out.
I've been able to find a few posts on StackOverflow about how to control USB devices using an Android phone -- which I understand is impossible (The Android being a USB device and all.)
However, I would be perfectly happy to set up my application to communicate with the other computer (a Linux host) as a USB device. (Like a really expensive mouse...)
Does anybody have information about how to set up an Android app/phone to use the USB connection and exchange data with a host computer. Obviously, it already works at some level -- it's how Eclipse and Android SDK/debugger do what they do, but I'm still looking for some way to do this in an application.
(My current phone, BTW, is a Droid Incredible.)
Thanks,
R.
Basically you'd need to install the USB device driver and the ADB toolsuite from the SDK, either that or reverse engineer their functionality and build it into something else.
Then you enable USB debugging on the phone.
And then you can do something like an adb port forward to allow an application on the pc to connect to a network socket listener on the phone. Note that connections cannot be made in the other direction, but once a connection is made it is bidirectional.
If your version of android supports tethering over USB, you could also leverage that to implicitly create a network between the PC and the phone, at which point you can make connections in either direction. Just make sure nothing starts accidentally pumping lots of data through the phone's mobile network!
(Many android phones actually can experimentally function as USB hosts, but you have to compile new drivers into the kernel, install the new version, and make up a cable to provide USB power to the device as the phone cannot. Also you lose the ADB over USB channel which makes debugging a pain)
I would like to use Android phones as a way to do some processing and visualization of a sensor that would be attached to the USB port on the phone. The sensor would plug into the micro/mini USB, and then I would need to read the incoming data from the USB serial port.
Is this possible? I have heard of people using Android to steer robots and other applications, but I have never seen Android being used as a host for a USB sensor. I can't seem to find any official documentation on the subject either, but it seems like it would be a very useful tool. Any thoughts, links, or information on this matter? Thanks.
What you're looking for is USB Host support.
There's an open issue in Android's issue tracker here for it:
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=738&colspec=ID%20Type%20Status%20Owner%20Summary%20Stars
and it's actually ranked 7th, in terms of "stars" (think votes, by the people), at 1110 stars. You can log in and star it yourself, both to vote for it, and to receive email updates.
There was also work on a patch back in February, 2010:
http://groups.google.com/group/android-kernel/browse_thread/thread/c8471573d7553331
and there's info on using a USB keyboard here:
http://www.tombom.co.uk/blog/?p=124
Perhaps you can find something for your sensor there?
This is cool =):
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/25286/?a=fb
Cheers,
Victor
should be possible, look up android.hardware.usb.UsbDevice # http://developer.android.com/reference/android/hardware/usb/UsbDevice.html
This support has been added since Android 3.1.
Look at http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/usb/index.html
This guy has modded his Nexus One to work as a USB host and has done several cool things.
He uses a USB keyboard and runs a movie from his USB stick. Then he runs a webcam through the phone and displays it on the computer and even runs an entire desktop-based Linux distro from his phone onto his computer monitor.
Pretty amazing stuff.
http://sven.killig.de/android/N1/2.2/usb_host/
The USB defines two type of equipment 1 usb host 2usb device .A device can only be attached to a host,no host to host or device to device connection.,in the beginning usb hosts were computers to which a usb device is attached.but with increase in popularity of usb interface a number of equipments come as usb host ie you can attach your pendrive and other usb device to it.In the starting mobile phones were manufactured as usb device ie you can attach your phone to usb host only typically a computer.but there also revolution come in now we have phone which can act as host and device when it is working as host we can attatch printer to it and when it work as device it can be attatched to a computer.only high end phone has this support.low end phones are still usb devices.
so we have two options
phone in usb host mode and your senser as usb device(you will need microcontroller that can act as usb device for this purpose-eg pic 18f2550 microcontroller);
your phone as device and your senser circuit as usb host here you will need high end microcontrollers that can act as usb host
in both cases there involves coding at both phone and senser circuit microcontroller
i dont know anything about phone side coding but i think this helps you to get a direction to what to do.
Have a look at You Are Here GPS.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.agbooth.usbgps