One of the very few downsides to the Asus transformer is the lack of a full-sized USB port on the tablet itself. You can always purchase a dock and Asus has said that they will be selling a miniUSB >USB dongle. However, neither of these solutions is really the same as having a slot within the tablet.
I figured the folks at XDA wouldn't stand for this!
Here is my challenge. Add a full USB slot to the tablet and post instructions.
Here is how I could see this going down:
1) Someone with more hardware know-how, open up your transformer and find a physical spot in which one could place a full female USB connector with a small mounting bracket.
I haven't seen a hardware teardown yet probably due to lack of stock.
2) Figure out wiring from a full USB slot to controller. Perhaps directly splicing with the microUSB cables?
3) Either do it yourself or write up your findings and let the community try.
I think with a small dremmel tool and some pieces from radioshack we could make a pretty good mod.
What do you guys think?
I'd be interested to see someone do this, but I think 99.99% of the population would be too afraid to take a dremel to their TF considering it is about 6 mm in width at the edges. It would have to be a pretty tiny dremel. That's not considering the risk of opening it up. Then, finding the right location to solder the USB port to on the circuit board.
I think I'll wait for the dongle
The easiest would be a dock connector to USB dongle. That way, it doesn't require opening anything, just scoping the dock and how that works.
Just wait for the official solution that's my advice
For what it's worth, I bought a usb 3.0 F-F adaptor and attached it to the power cable. I then plugged in a usb memory stick. There was some activity and drivers were loaded on the Transformer, but the memory stick was not recognized.
Anyone else have any luck with this?
So, I purchases a USB OTG cable in an attempt to try and expand the functionality of Webtop while using Nebtop. I've been unable to get any response from the phone when I plug in this cable. I've tried my wireless Logitech mouse and keyboard that worked off the bat with my TF101 using the Unifying remote they came with as well as an external TB drive.
Has anyone else had any experience with this? It seems logical that the phone supports host mode since the actual dock has 3 full sized USB ports.
All the information pertaining to this sort of thing I've come up with seems extremely phone specific but if there's a simple solution I'm missing thanks all the more.
ri4naire said:
So, I purchases a USB OTG cable in an attempt to try and expand the functionality of Webtop while using Nebtop. I've been unable to get any response from the phone when I plug in this cable. I've tried my wireless Logitech mouse and keyboard that worked off the bat with my TF101 using the Unifying remote they came with as well as an external TB drive.
Has anyone else had any experience with this? It seems logical that the phone supports host mode since the actual dock has 3 full sized USB ports.
All the information pertaining to this sort of thing I've come up with seems extremely phone specific but if there's a simple solution I'm missing thanks all the more.
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Click to collapse
The problem actually lies in the usb port of the phone itself. The dock was designed for this purpose, and the dock app handles most that for you, the one thing that the dock is able to do that a straight USB cable can't do, is provide enough "bus" power to use a mouse or even a USB stick directly from the phone. If you want to use a Mouse you will need to get a dock. I got mine directly from wireless.att.com, and it was only $49.00 back in Nov. when I got it. It works VERY well with webtop.
P.S. Motorola is very famous for doing things like this to force you into a dock, or to lock out certain features that everyone really wants to use.
I made my own dock by using a powered usb hub I had sitting around (it was actually the one that came with Rock Band for my Xbox 360). I did have to modify it slightly so that the 1 pin was powered from the 5V (a simple shunt from the 5V inner pin of the power supply solder joint to the solder joint of the 1 pin worked fine--although it might be wise to insert an inline fuse since it also charges your phone while plugged in).
Otherwise, the only other thing needed is coming in the form of your otg adapter that should short the 5 pin (common) with your 4 pin (ID). I did this by cracking open an extra micro usb cable and soldering a wire between the two.
So, my setup was like this:
1. Modified usb cable to short the 4 & 5 pins to let the phone know to go into host
2. Use a female A-female A usb coupler to join the usb cable to the powered hub (I got mine here from Monoprice
3. Get 5V to the 1 pin in the usb hub to provide power to your phone and for whatever is plugged into the hub.
With this, I was easily able to run a usb mouse and a wireless keyboard that had a usb dongle. Paired with a micro hdmi cable to hdmi-dvi adapter, I am able to use my office monitor and the webtop linux. I honestly haven't really used it much yet (if I found it really useful, I probably would have just paid for the dock).
The obvious easy way is to just get the dock. However, I really like being able to do this on my own and since I had this stuff already laying around. Also, the cheap prices from monoprice (I actually made $4 off of the purchase from a PayPal bill-me-later promotion).
So, you should be able to get it to work if you get power to the bus on your usb (but again, it might be safe to pass an appropriate fast-acting fuse, ferrite core, or something to protect from surges). I haven't had issue yet, but I also don't use it often...yet .
It sounds like a bit of yes and a bit of no. The OTG cable I got is microUSB to female full USB, am I going to need to modify this cable as you've described by crossing the 4th and 5th pins?
I'm thinking about ordering this "7 Port USB Squid Hub" since it has the 5v power adapter, do you think it might work?
Just one more question and thanks for all the help but should I not see any response from the phone when I plug in the cable? I read through some of the reviews for cheap cables on Amazon and apparently sometimes they're just useless.
ri4naire said:
It sounds like a bit of yes and a bit of no. The OTG cable I got is microUSB to female full USB, am I going to need to modify this cable as you've described by crossing the 4th and 5th pins?
I'm thinking about ordering this "7 Port USB Squid Hub" since it has the 5v power adapter, do you think it might work?
Just one more question and thanks for all the help but should I not see any response from the phone when I plug in the cable? I read through some of the reviews for cheap cables on Amazon and apparently sometimes they're just useless.
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Click to collapse
The OTG cable have should work. The OTG cable, to my knowledge, should already have pins 4 & 5 shorted together. I'm not completely certain, but if it's designed as an OTG, it would probably already have that done. If you have an ohmmeter/multimeter, you could try to check (it's hard to isolate the small pins, but you can try). If it's already going to the USB female (type A), you will then be able to directly attach your hub when you get it (without the need of the coupler I had to get).
When I used mine, there was no notification that said "Hey, I'm in USB Host Mode!". However, if you successfully have a mouse attached, you'll see a mouse cursor arrow on your screen.
Have fun with it and if you can't get it to work, let me know and I'll try to explain with even more detail (perhaps with some pretty pictures) of what I did. I more or less went off of what I could glean from reading what others did.
It works great! Also, it is weird to see the mouse on this little a screen, it seems oversized.
I just plugged everything in and it worked off the bat. I'm using just two items from Amazon I got for under 12 bucks (plus, of course, the keyboard and mouse I already had for my computer). I don' think I can post links to the forums yet but the ASINs for the items if people want to do this on the super cheap are as follows:
B0043TBCDS 7 Port USB Squid Hub, a whopping $5.19
B005N55WHI Micro-B USB OTG Cable... $5.99
I chose these because of their Prime eligibility and also for their form factor so as not to cover the HDMI port, I bet it's not impossible to get these even cheaper.
While this isn't technically a replacement for the dock since I had to root the device and I have to press "Load" in Nebtop if I want to go to Webtop I'm extremely pleased with the results.
I also love that all the soft keys are available. The ones I've discovered are that right button on the mouse as well as Esc are Back, the Home key is Home, clicking the wheel as well as Ctrl, Cmd, Alt and a whole slew of others bring up the Menu, but all I can find is F5 for Search.
On another note, while the phone does charge when hooked up, a practical boon, the screen still times out despite having the "Stay awake" feature checked. This is annonying when the phone is on it's side accross the room and I have to squint to see the cursor and swipe it unlocked sideways as well as click back into Mirror Display.
I know this is probably more for Microsoft Surface Developer Section but seeing how I am still pretty new I don't have enough post to be able to post in that area.
I am mainly curious if anyone knows the pin outs for the Touch/Type Cover connector on the bottom of the tablet and if it uses standard USB or if it is some kind of special propitiatory type connection that would say connect the keyboard membrane to the keyboard controller that may be in the tablet? If it is just a standard USB connection I am thinking about cannibalizing a touch cover to see if I can create a home Grown Dock so to speak for the tablet that would have a USB hub for keyboard and mouse and a USB to Ethernet adapter that works with the tablet. The USB hub will draw power from a modified Power Cord for the tablet IF I can figure out that electrical later on to where it wont fry my tablet or other accessories but first I need to figure out the first part.
TLDR Does anyone know if the touch/type cover user a standard USB protocol and if so what is the pin layout for the connector on the tablet. If anyone can help that would be appreciated.
I just received a surface and they through in 2 type covers. said, "keep it" on a sticky note. I am now working on figuring out what the connectors are. I dont see the point of having 6 connectors, so I think that some may be ground or false. I will open up one of the keyboards to see what ships they are connecting to. i would think it has to be usb. I know that the 6th pin, that is 6th from the left pin, is 1.8v when grounded. I am guessing that the voltage goes up once the surface detects the attached keyboard. I will write back, let me know if you have figured anything else out. seems like we are hte only people on the internet who even care at this point. and microsoft is literally giving away surface computers.
Greg00135 said:
I know this is probably more for Microsoft Surface Developer Section but seeing how I am still pretty new I don't have enough post to be able to post in that area.
I am mainly curious if anyone knows the pin outs for the Touch/Type Cover connector on the bottom of the tablet and if it uses standard USB or if it is some kind of special propitiatory type connection that would say connect the keyboard membrane to the keyboard controller that may be in the tablet? If it is just a standard USB connection I am thinking about cannibalizing a touch cover to see if I can create a home Grown Dock so to speak for the tablet that would have a USB hub for keyboard and mouse and a USB to Ethernet adapter that works with the tablet. The USB hub will draw power from a modified Power Cord for the tablet IF I can figure out that electrical later on to where it wont fry my tablet or other accessories but first I need to figure out the first part.
TLDR Does anyone know if the touch/type cover user a standard USB protocol and if so what is the pin layout for the connector on the tablet. If anyone can help that would be appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
any progress?
i already build a power wire, with a 5,5mm plug to connect it to my Intocircuit PC26000 for more juice on the go, and for a second charger.
you can see the pinouts of the power plug in the attatched pic.
let me know if you got any results for the cover connector so far - if its USB, i will implement my UMTS stick into a cover
Cheers!
just got pictures of the cover connector, see attatchment.
in fact all the 6 pins are connected. USB 2.0 would take 4 of them.
my guess is that one of them could be a switch, to turn the device & keyboard on and off.
any progress
Curious if anyone has made any progress on decoding the pinout, figuring out if it's usb or not?
i didn't do any further research - but it guess it's usb, or at least kind of... as it shows up as USB device in the device manager...
tfBullet said:
just got pictures of the cover connector, see attatchment.
in fact all the 6 pins are connected. USB 2.0 would take 4 of them.
my guess is that one of them could be a switch, to turn the device & keyboard on and off.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Judging by the connector and the fact that the covers are USB-based and can be used reversed, the pinout makes perfect sense. The likely possibility for the pinout is as follows:
Power Cover connector (Using pin labels in picture)
1/10 = Power cover +ve
2/9 = Power cover Ground
Touch/Type connector (Using pin labels in picture)
3 = +ve
4 = Ground
5/6 = Data +ve or -ve (reversible internally)
7/8 = Attachment direction detect
Pins on Touch/Type cover itself (Pinout from left [1] to right [6])
1/6 = +ve
2/5 = Ground
3/4 = Data +ve or -ve (reversible internally)
As to if the USB data pairs are swapped on the SP or the Cover, we cannot know without more information. Depending on the voltage supplied or the presence of unauthorised hardware detection (e.g. the ID chip in Apple earphones, I doubt it), custom USB devices should be fairly trivial (electrically).
I know this is an old thread but has anyone made any further progress on this? If not, I'm considering experimenting myself with a spare touch cover and a raspberry pi
geronphillips said:
I know this is an old thread but has anyone made any further progress on this? If not, I'm considering experimenting myself with a spare touch cover and a raspberry pi
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Click to collapse
Nope, im sorry, i didn't make further progress on this, exept what i already posted.. it is a USB connection, you can easily verify that yourself by looking at the Touch/type-cover in the device-manager...
I guess you can easily connect other USB devices if you build yourself an adapter..
but there could also be some kind of verification, if so then its most likely software based, if you hit a barrier, try reverseing the type-cover driver, you might find something there...
One additional info: the big outer nipples can be used to charge the device.
Peace
If I were to leverage the bottom grooves for charging, can you tell me which pin is which? +/-
tfBullet said:
Nope, im sorry, i didn't make further progress on this, exept what i already posted.. it is a USB connection, you can easily verify that yourself by looking at the Touch/type-cover in the device-manager...
I guess you can easily connect other USB devices if you build yourself an adapter..
but there could also be some kind of verification, if so then its most likely software based, if you hit a barrier, try reverseing the type-cover driver, you might find something there...
One additional info: the big outer nipples can be used to charge the device.
Peace
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi tfBullet,
When you say "the big outer nipples can be used to charge the devices" are you referring to these...
Power Cover connector (Using pin labels in picture)
1/10 = Power cover +ve
2/9 = Power cover Ground
Any new discovery?
Any new discovery?
will the power output still be live, if the data signals are not shorted? e.g: IOS devices
Can we just connect the keyboard via usb to a windows pc?
I don't think this is true USB, as there is no 5 volts anywhere on the connector, only 3.3 volts.. It may be USB, but needing to be level-shifted before you can use it. It may be potentially a way to get another USB port on the damn thing. Why did they think one USB port is enough? I have been trying to boot it from flash drive, but need keyboard as well, but the USB will not boot with a hub connected. Grrrrr.
slurpy1 said:
I don't think this is true USB, as there is no 5 volts anywhere on the connector, only 3.3 volts.. It may be USB, but needing to be level-shifted before you can use it. It may be potentially a way to get another USB port on the damn thing. Why did they think one USB port is enough? I have been trying to boot it from flash drive, but need keyboard as well, but the USB will not boot with a hub connected. Grrrrr.
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Why not booting on a flash drive and use the usb for keyboard???
There's someone here who's made some progress...
edwardsh.in/keyboard%20cover/2015/08/13/applying-logic-to-the-surface-touch-cover
i want to connect the keyboard itself to other devices
Hey guys
Good thread going on , i would like to see if any one of you ever thought about to use keyboard itself not the port , for some reasons I would like to use the keyboard on other devices (i mean kinda convert the pins to a USB port and use it on other pcs or what i really desire about is using it on Xbox) i want to see if any of you have any ideas or information about this , i mean is this even possible ? I've read the whole replies and most of them were about the port on surface and yeah its really cool , but i want to see if its possible to do , cause if its possible then it would be a lot easier than the port on the surface
Thanks
Ferrybigger said:
Hey guys
Good thread going on , i would like to see if any one of you ever thought about to use keyboard itself not the port , for some reasons I would like to use the keyboard on other devices (i mean kinda convert the pins to a USB port and use it on other pcs or what i really desire about is using it on Xbox) i want to see if any of you have any ideas or information about this , i mean is this even possible ? I've read the whole replies and most of them were about the port on surface and yeah its really cool , but i want to see if its possible to do , cause if its possible then it would be a lot easier than the port on the surface
Thanks
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Click to collapse
Well, take a look at the link Neakmenter posted, the guy there analyzed the communication, turns out it's no standard USB, it's proprietary.. Which means, there is no easy way of using this keyboard anywhere else than the surface... You would need some kind of microcontroller which connects to the keyboard, interprets it's signals, and relays them as Standart HID signals to a USB port..
The connector alone is a problem as well, you'd need to 3D print a connector or something like that, it's just not worth the effort i guess [emoji2371]
Gesendet von meinem MAR-LX1A mit Tapatalk
Hi guys,
I'm trying to figure out how many products do actually use the 11 pin microUSB connector. I know the S4 and the Note 2 do, and I guess I'm pretty safe asuming the Note 3 and S5 also have it. Do you guys know any other device having 11pin microUSB connectors?
For the rest, the advantage of this connector is the capability of having an HDMI connection, with space for additional (and simultaneous) USB connections. That means, with the proper adapter/dock, you get to have a full fledged "computer", with monitor, USB mouse and keyboard, and you can even plug external drives, all at the same time.
The ports with 5 pins on the other hand don't seem to be able, so you either have HDMI or USB, but not both at the same time.
So yeah, any other model? I'm seeing now on the search suggestions it seems the HTC Hero also has something like that...Is there any list or compilation somewhere?