[Q] USB Hosting - Xoom Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

I bought a small micro - usb female adapter. When I plug it in, no matter what device i use it seems as those the xoom is not sending any power through it.
Ive tried
Camera
Charge Phone
usb mouse
usb wireless mouse
nothing is getting power.
Is there something i need to enable or do? Or has anyone esle has this issue? I am on 3.1....

You can not use a simple micro usb adapter cable, it has to be an OTG USB Host cable like the official Motorola camera connection kit that is now available. This is a bit expensive but readily available at your local Best Buy.
Take a look at some of the many posts on OTG cables and you can find info on cheaper cables that have been verified to work or on how to make your own.

you need a USB Host cable. Not just a regular sync cable. You can google for one or search the threads here where others have linked to confirmed working cables.

dang, thanks guys

I ordered one from ebay! hope it works

I have a question that applies here, I am on stock 3.1 Xoom WiFi/3G and just got my OTG cable, plug it in usb drive blinks like its working but where is it located on the Xoom? I've been looking around for it with Astro and File Explorer and I'm unable to find it... could someone tell me the path?

Techsniffer said:
I have a question that applies here, I am on stock 3.1 Xoom WiFi/3G and just got my OTG cable, plug it in usb drive blinks like its working but where is it located on the Xoom? I've been looking around for it with Astro and File Explorer and I'm unable to find it... could someone tell me the path?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i believe stock 3.1 only supports MTP, hence no USB mass storage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Transfer_Protocol

I've heard many conflicting stories, I would like some sort of confirmation rather then speculation about what will/will not work with the Moto Xoom (Stock 3.1) Wifi/3g and an OTG cable because I've seen posts saying yes and no to USB, portable HD's etc etc. Can anyone even provide me with some informative links? Everything I've searched for has been less than informative.

So, stock 3.1 Xoom is an MTP device, that is true.
However, with latest series of Tiamat custom kernels by Bigrushdog (see Android Development section) the usbOTG has been enabled. If you have already rooted and installed the proper bootloader/Tiamat kernel, then in File Expert you will find the usbOTG folder on the root directory, same level as internal sdcard and data folders. If you go up a step in sdcard, you should see your external sdcard. Is this clear?

I have rooted, using the Tiamat 1.6, I have access to the sdcard now but I am still unable to access my usb drive (thumb drive). I have an OTG usb cable and when I go into the /OTGusb its empty. The drive blinks as if its initializing but then nothing.

On a side note, I have looked through both OTGusb folders, restarted the Xoom with the OTG and usb plugged in as suggested in another post and nothing I've tried has worked in locating the usb drive.

Techsniffer said:
I have rooted, using the Tiamat 1.6, I have access to the sdcard now but I am still unable to access my usb drive (thumb drive). I have an OTG usb cable and when I go into the /OTGusb its empty. The drive blinks as if its initializing but then nothing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've found that there are two factors which may be in play here...
1. When I connect a flash drive it takes a bit of time for the directory structure to parse... It does show up in the OTGusb directory.
2. I've found that anything larger than 8GB (I've seen it stated in the forums as well) does not work (of if it does it takes forever and a day to become available)
Hope it helps...

I have same problem here. whenever I try to connect the USB with Motorola connector, it doesn't appear anything in otgusb

I'm not sure I am going to get what I want at this time with the OTG cable. My goal is to be able to use the OTG cable to connect a USB thumb drive to so I can carry additional movies, documents, etc without completely consuming the main Xoom storage.
Can the OTGusb cable support this? Do I need to wait for yet another update?
TIA

Related

[Q] Can the XOOM act as a USB Host?

Hi, can anyone who owns a XOOM pls let me know if you can plug in:
1) a USB flash drive to the XOOM, and view and open files on the drive?
2) an external hard drive and view and access files from your XOOM
Many thanks
masrinz said:
Hi, can anyone who owns a XOOM pls let me know if you can plug in:
1) a USB flash drive to the XOOM, and view and open files on the drive?
2) an external hard drive and view and access files from your XOOM
Many thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Does the Xoom have a USB port? Pretty sure it only has MicroUSB. I guess they do have microusb flash drives not that I look.
Hi. Yup its only got micro USB, but I guess you could use the included adapter cable to plug in a flash drive.... we don't have the XOOM here yet, but the functionality of being able to connect a flash drive, move files e.g. PDF or .doc and then view them is important to me.
masrinz said:
Hi. Yup its only got micro USB, but I guess you could use the included adapter cable to plug in a flash drive.... we don't have the XOOM here yet, but the functionality of being able to connect a flash drive, move files e.g. PDF or .doc and then view them is important to me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As of today what you want is not avab. The cable it comes with doesn't take input. They do have a cable online that will do this one day, but doesn't do it yet.
Sent from my Xoom using Tapatalk
The cable that Motorola "will" be selling is a micro-usb to standard usb (female) adapter. I'll look around for the sources, but I know that I saw this detailed in a few videos from Motorola techs and at least one reviewer site.
The cable is not just a straight conversion of form factor, but has the necessary pinout to instruct the Xoom to jump into usb host mode. From the reports that I saw, it would absolutely provide the ability to plug usb drives, cameras and other accessories into the xoom for direct access. In fact, the reviewer that I saw, made a comment that they had verified the functionality by plugging in a couple usb keyboards... supposedly worked like a champ.
Lame that we need a "special" adapter, but I can imagine that if it is just a pinout issue, it may be possible for the good folks here at XDA to craft a software solution that would allow us to bypass the motorola-branded cable... It would have been WAY cooler if it was a standard usb port, like some of the other tablets on the horizon.
Thanks. They mention in many reviews and I think Google mentioned it too that you can attach a mouse or keyboard by cable (I know about Bluetooth) which suggests that it should support input, so is it just a hardware interface thing or an actual firmware OS/software issue?
Edit: thanks for the great response gigglebox.... we posted simultaneously
Is this it?
http://www.clove.co.uk/motorola-xoom-camera-connection-kit
masrinz said:
Is this it?
http://www.clove.co.uk/motorola-xoom-camera-connection-kit
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Visually, yeah. Looks like they took it off their site for some reason. In fact the only times that I saw this on Moto's site, was in the day or 2 leading up to the launch... when typing in xoom into the search bar on their landing page, it would spit out a drop-down menu listing the Camera Connection Kit (by name and pic).
I dont like the fact that they call it a "camera connection", but they werent pulling any punches about it serving as a host. They did note that the external storage (thumbdrives, etc) were not yet supported, but that they would be. The cameras and (according to them) keyboards were working now.
I believe it is possible but right now it is a software limitation.
More info here: https://supportforums.motorola.com/message/329075
Droid4All said:
I believe it is possible but right now it is a software limitation.
More info here: https://supportforums.motorola.com/message/329075
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agreed, the engineer from moto definitely says the hardware should accept any usb 2.0 or higher device, but it's a software issue. Toshiba have a straight usb and a micro usb port on their device so hopefully they're working on this.
We don't have the XOOM here yet, but hopefully by the time it becomes available (approx April) we might have the option of the Toshiba as well.
I use this USB host cable and it works great. Have tested it with my 750gb Oyen and 320gb WD Passport external HDD's, several usb flash drives (8-16gb), San disk USB memory card reader, and a USB keyboard.
For those having issues getting their Xoom to recognize USB storage devices here's what I've got and did to get it to work: I flashed my XOOM (3.1) to the 2.6.36.4 Tiamat_Xoom-v1.4.4-Full_Throttle Kernel and was unable to get the USBMount to recognize drives or storage at first. I installed USB Mass Storage Watcher from the market (it's free) and it works awesome! Can mount any storage I want (NTFS, FAT16/32, HFS, HFS+, EXT2, ETX3, EXT4) with any capacity. I think this app will work with any rooted Xoom (or other devices). Under my Kernel my USB host is located under/usbOTG.
Hope this helps.
FYI ... I've checked it and stock ROM Xoom without root is able to operate standard PC keyboard/mouse using basic one-to-one usb->microusb adapter (without any electronics onboard).
Probably with proper dual socket usb adapter (also without electronics onboard) it would be possible to connect both keyboard and mouse at once.
irekd said:
FYI ... I've checked it and stock ROM Xoom without root is able to operate standard PC keyboard/mouse using basic one-to-one usb->microusb adapter (without any electronics onboard).
Probably with proper dual socket usb adapter (also without electronics onboard) it would be possible to connect both keyboard and mouse at once.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
if you have a Logitech keyboard and mouse that connect by the unifying receiver,or mostly any keyboard+mouse combo that connects by one receiver, then only a standard OTG cable should work.

[Q] Can you use USB in host mode?

Can you use the USB in host mode on the transformer?
Can it host multiple USB storage with a USB hub? (say a camera and a hard drive, so I can get the files off)
Thanks
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1056592&highlight=gender+changer
People have said you can use the USB ports on the dock as a host for thumb drives and such. And if the dock does not enable it today it should work 3.1 ships. Check the second item (USB), http://developer.android.com/sdk/android-3.1-highlights.html
Thanks guys, I have done the search already.
I'm more interested in the experience of the transformer users, and would love to know if anyone got it to work
^^ the link i posted has several users and their experiences with what did and did not work.....
Not sure if I understand the question correctly. This morning I "loaded" my TF with everything I had: microSD, SD, external HDD, and MP3 player, all at once, while connected to the PC using the proprietary ASUS cable. I could access everything without problem.
For those who wonder - I did this only to find out where what is mounted...
funnycreature said:
Not sure if I understand the question correctly. This morning I "loaded" my TF with everything I had: microSD, SD, external HDD, and MP3 player, all at once, while connected to the PC using the proprietary ASUS cable. I could access everything without problem.
For those who wonder - I did this only to find out where what is mounted...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nice, did you use a USB hub? or were you using the docking keyboard that has multiple usb ports?
Thanks
TheFlyingPig said:
Nice, did you use a USB hub? or were you using the docking keyboard that has multiple usb ports?
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
All with the dock No USB hub.

[Q] micro usb to usb adapter

Here's a cross post from the Mesmerize thread where I'm not having any luck:
I have a 2.2.1 (rooted) Mesmerize and I can't get it to recognize anything plugged into the Samsung Micro USB to USB Adapter I just bought.
The phone is set to "Mass Storage" for USB and I've tried both USB Debugging on and off.
I can't get it to recognize any of 5 thumb drives that I've tried connecting to it. So either it's a bad cable, or something else in the phone is preventing the connection. Help, please!
EDIT: I'm possibly naive in assuming that this (reading a USB thumb drive from the phone) will work at all, but since they (Samsung) sell the cable and tout it as being capable of it, I must just be missing something such as a setting or the necessary version of Android or a wonderful hack from this group.
Please use the Q&A Forum for questions Thanks
Moving to Q&A
What you are asking for is a USB host function on your phone. As far as I know there is none for the Mesmerize or android. The cable is to connect your device with a pc or other that does have usb host drivers.
there are probably other, better ways of getting extended storage. what exactly are your trying to accomplish?
I just figured it would be cool to read off a thumb drive (or usb card reader set up as a thumb drive with an sd card or micro sd card attached) from my phone. For instance, if I'm out somewhere and I take a picture with my camera and I immediately want to get that picture from the camera to the phone (without using a pc as a bridge)... I could just remove the sd card from the camera, plug it into my card reader, plug my card reader into the micro usb to usb adapter and then plug that into the phone. Whereupon the phone would recognize a thumb drive is attached and let me navigate it the way I navigate the internal micro sd card.
yeah I don't think usb hosting was available until 3.1
I don't even know how easy it is with newer devices.
What about with a custom mod/ROM?
mad towner,
i would like to know how did u root ur phone. i have a tab with same os as yours. but i find it very difficult to root.
thanks in advance.

One S USB mounting problem

Hi all,
Apologies if this has been answered elsewhere but I have looked and cant find anything.
My One S is Jelly Bean 4.0.1 (un-rooted)
The problem I have is basically this.
I have a Micro-B Usb Otg On The Go Cable and Integral MicroSD USB Card Reader with a 32gb Micro SD.
When I first put all this together and plugged into the USB slot of the phone everything was fine, the little red light on the Integral MicroSD USB Card Reader was lit up. The message of Unable To Charge Device was coming up but the phone was also mounting the storage for reading via Astro File Manager no problem, so I was able to play MP3's and 4's and so on. But then it literally just stopped reading the Micro SD card and the Micro USB Card Reader is not lighting up at all.
Any help will be greatly appreciated as I am at a lost as to why it would be working perfectly one second and then not another.
Thanks you.
Follow up.
Been doing a little bit more looking into this and it looks like it has to do with USB hosting. Is there any reason my phone would just stop hosting a OTG USB Flash Drive? As i mentioned before it work fine for a while and literally just stopped recognizing that there was any Mini Sd attached.
spruggs said:
Hi all,
Apologies if this has been answered elsewhere but I have looked and cant find anything.
My One S is Jelly Bean 4.0.1 (un-rooted)
The problem I have is basically this.
I have a Micro-B Usb Otg On The Go Cable and Integral MicroSD USB Card Reader with a 32gb Micro SD.
When I first put all this together and plugged into the USB slot of the phone everything was fine, the little red light on the Integral MicroSD USB Card Reader was lit up. The message of Unable To Charge Device was coming up but the phone was also mounting the storage for reading via Astro File Manager no problem, so I was able to play MP3's and 4's and so on. But then it literally just stopped reading the Micro SD card and the Micro USB Card Reader is not lighting up at all.
Any help will be greatly appreciated as I am at a lost as to why it would be working perfectly one second and then not another.
Thanks you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You seem to be stock so not sure what's up with that but could try factory reset in the bootloader has long has you haven't changed recovery but backup what's on the SD Card because that will get wiped too.
Darknites said:
You seem to be stock so not sure what's up with that but could try factory reset in the bootloader has long has you haven't changed recovery but backup what's on the SD Card because that will get wiped too.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks Darknites,
I have reset hard from the settings menu, does it make a difference if i reset from bootloader? I have downloaded USB Host Controller and look at what results I get from running that and I get the SC3 USB Host Driver Not Found which I believe is something to do with the chip set which doesnt apply to my phone but I also get the message of USB Root Hub Present but I also get Not Present sometimes when re-running and the same with USB Host Mode is Active and then sometimes Not Active after re-running the Host Controller App.
I did read somewhere that its possible that certain chip/chips might have been damaged/fried by an extended use of USB Hosting to a flash drive, is this correct?
Thanks again for the reply.
spruggs said:
I did read somewhere that its possible that certain chip/chips might have been damaged/fried by an extended use of USB Hosting to a flash drive, is this correct?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I havnt heard of that in YEARS, and even that was in most cases a false rumor. I have never encountered a chip dying by being used properly.
If you short-circut the cables or something - then yeah, thats a different story.
spruggs said:
Thanks Darknites,
I have reset hard from the settings menu, does it make a difference if i reset from bootloader? I have downloaded USB Host Controller and look at what results I get from running that and I get the SC3 USB Host Driver Not Found which I believe is something to do with the chip set which doesnt apply to my phone but I also get the message of USB Root Hub Present but I also get Not Present sometimes when re-running and the same with USB Host Mode is Active and then sometimes Not Active after re-running the Host Controller App.
I did read somewhere that its possible that certain chip/chips might have been damaged/fried by an extended use of USB Hosting to a flash drive, is this correct?
Thanks again for the reply.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ya in bootloader everything gets wiped even sd.
I did cross my mind re the cable because the drives are fine in my PC, I know they are powered there though. I might try another OTG cable, there cheap as. Its just strange that one minute the Micro SD drive was working perfectly and then kaput.

[Q] Connecting an external hard drive via the usb port

Hi guys. Is there an app out there that makes it possible to connect an external USB flash drive or 2.5" drive to the shield tab via its USB port?
I'm pretty sure you just do, and you'll be good. Strangely I've never had any problems using an OTG USB drive with the Shield. That's what you'd be looking for, by the way... Am OTG cable.
One quick thing to note is, be prepared to need to power the hard drive. The tablet may not have enough juice to power a full hard drive. So if you plug it in and it isn't recognized, try a powered USB hub.
Secondly, make sure you have ES file explorer.
I use a WD ultra passport portable 1tb drive and a otg cable.
I just plug in, open ES file explorer an get what I need an unmount an disconnect.
You'll lose a few percent of battery potential as expected.
WR
Thanks guys. I'm honestly shocked this actually works. I tried it with my WD passport laptop drive and low and behold it works flawlessly. With the research I did in the past with my HTC EVDO 3D, and reading all the comments on various messageboards, I really thought connecting USB HDDs to any Android device would not work. Does it work in this instance mainly because the device is a Shield Tablet? Or is it only because I'm rooted, and as a result any rooted Android device will allow USB HDDs to be used?
OTG and enough power
It just works if your (android) device has an On the Go (OTG) USB connector AND if it gives enough power to your (hard) drive. If there isn't enough power, you need a Y OTG cable and external power source. Many smartphones do not provide the 500mA at 5V they should provide, but tablets usually give enough from my experience.

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