Is there a way to write a driver for android phone, so that when i plug it in the computer it's going to install it with the default usb drivers? I want to make a application that needs a driver to be installed on the computer to use it.
You could have your Android App download or contain the installer for your driver and then copy it to the SD card storage area. There is no way to get the installer to autorun because Android connects either with MPT or PTP. These can be used to access a file from the SD card, but it does not mount as an ordinary storage device. You will need to have instructions in the app to tell the user how to access it.
Honestly, it will probably be easier to have them download it separately and install it.
Related
I am currently making an app that needs to be able to read from and write to a USB flash drive connected via a USB OTG adapter. Is there an easy way to access this storage via standard Java.io.File APIs? This app is only going to be run on a rooted Motorola Xoom running Android 4.2.2. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
USB Drives get mounted to your device just like an SDCard does essentially*.
The mount path usually resides at:
/storage/usb0/
I have not used this on many devices other then my Droid running CyanogenMod, your device may very. You can smiply use a file manager to explore this path. The directories will still exist even if there is no mount path, so you will be able to determine the path.
It may seem strange, but I wonder is an android app able to make the SD Card inside the device windows bootable? I thought of making the SD bootable and write ultimatebootcd to it. I did it through windows, but it would be so great if android can do it!
To make the SD card bootable, you have to modify the boot sector of the card. This can not be done from a standard Android application. If the Android device is rooted, it can almost certainly be done from a native Linux program, or an NDK program.
If the device is not rooted, you can probably not do what you want. As Chris Stratton commented, if the card is already made bootable, you could probably then change for instance what OS is booted up and how.
Say, there is startup code which loads and boots an OS, then you can change the configuration file for the bootloader. A starter: http://www.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php/Boot_an_Iso_image
I used Rufus and installed a syslynux on the SdCard from a PC running window 10.then I put the card back into the Moto phone. It's receiving files that I have moved from the internal storage to the card how ever I have not a chance to find out whether they Will open up In the PC or not.
I'm trying to copy my app to an Android phone without an SD card. I've tried bluetooth and I've tried email attachment, but both of them seem to require an SD card for the download to take place. Is there any other way to do this without having an SD card at hand?
I frequently deploy to my phone using the eclipse IDE. Assuming the drivers for your phone are installed on your PC you can connect your phone with a USB cable and simply run the application in debug mode and it will deploy to your phone.
I've also emailed an app to my phone and then install it from my email. Are you certain you have allowed apps to be installed from unknown sources? If you have not you will need to do so.
Here is a procedure if this is from eclipse.
In your project>Bin>file.apk assuming eclipse
send the file.apk file to your phone.
Use an app installer to install the file.apk to your phone.
There you go a copy of your program
In my experience neither the mail client app or anything that imply a download from a website from the browser have being able to install the APKs without compying it on an SDCard before.
The only solution I got working so far would be to open the APK from the Google Drive app.
I suppose other network drive services could works as well but never had occasion to try them out.
I am developing an application that has the following requirement:
When the device is connected to a computer via USB, the user should be
able to use Windows Explorer to drag files into and out of the
application directory.
The application will consume some of these files and produces others
which should be able to be copied back to the computer.
The target device does not have an external storage device (for
example an SD Card).
The directories that the files will be stored in should be accessible
whilst the application is running.
I've looked into the data storage page in the android documentation, but none of the methods stated there seem to do what I require.
Alternatively, is there a way to select the computer when the application is running and 'send' files via USB to the computer? How about for 'receiving' files?
What is the best way to fulfill this requirement?
When the device is connected to a computer via USB, the user should be able to use Windows Explorer to drag files into and out of the application directory.
If "the application directory" refers to a spot on external storage, this is possible.
The application will consume some of these files and produces others which should be able to be copied back to the computer.
If this is supposed to happen simultaneously, the device must be running Android 3.x or higher. Android 1.x and 2.x did not support simultaneous access to external storage.
The target device does not have an external storage device (for example an SD Card).
It needs to have something designated as "external storage". That does not have to be removable storage. On Android 3.x and 4.x, it is usually just a part of on-board flash that was designated to be accessible as external storage. In Android terms, "external storage" means "can be accessed by a host computer using USB and by all applications on the device as well".
The directories that the files will be stored in should be accessible whilst the application is running.
Again, this requires Android 3.x or higher. If this is a custom device, that most likely means you are going to need to use the recently-released Android 4.0 source code.
Alternatively, is there a way to select the computer when the application is running and 'send' files via USB to the computer? How about for 'receiving' files?
No and no, respectively.
What your going to want to do is use Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory. Even if there is no sd card, most android devices partition a part of the on board memory to be used as external storage.
I would like to have an application sync itself with some files on a host computer.. Anyone know if this is possible? Eg: When you connect an Android phone to a computer i would like an application on the android system to read some allowed folders on the connected computer. Making it so the user doesn't have to sync files itself.
I ask possible, because i assume it isn't.. for security.
You won't be able to do it solely from the Android end, because Windows doesn't make the local drives available through the USB port like that (unless you have some custom driver on the Windows side).
Your Android device will probably show up to windows as a USB drive. If you have an SD card plugged in, you may see a second drive from the Windows side.
To do something like this, you'd probably need to have software running on the Windows side that did the syncing, and then copy the data from the /sdcard directory on the Android device to wherever you ultimately need it to be.