I've researched this quite a bit and no of the solutions seem to fit my scenario. I'm looking for a solution to use a tablet as a gcode sender for my cnc machine. Otg cables can transmit fine, but there's no charging available (without installing a resistor, which is honestly more hassle than I'm looking for) and some of my carves take longer than the battery life. I have USB-c to hdmi hub with 3 USB ports, and it works when using on my phone, but I can't have my fold 3 sitting in the shop all day...so maybe a cheaper mhl compatible tablet would work?
I have yet to buy anything bc I don't want to waste money on something that's not going to work. Processing power doesn't really matter as it just needs to transfer gcode, and I'd prefer it to be on the cheaper side as it's going to be in a very dusty environment. Any and all help is appreciated.
Related
I have the dock as well as a usb A male to male cable. Any way to leave the usb cable connected from the dock to my pc to transfer files?
I can leave a jump drive plugged into the dock and access it with ifileManager, but I'd like it to function similar to using the included cable. It would be so easy to swap a file real quick while it's on the dock charging compared to connecting another cable or removing the microsd.
Where did you get the dock? I Googled for it and didn't find anything being sold for the Viewsonic G Tablet.
MSU_Sparty said:
Where did you get the dock? I Googled for it and didn't find anything being sold for the Viewsonic G Tablet.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe use the search feature on the gtablet forums
It's the malata dock sold at merimobiles and alibaba, among other places, check the accessory forum and you'll see a few posts regarding where to get it and reviews of it.
It seems the full size usb and the mini usb function very differently fom one another.
My computer knowledge is limited mostly to hardware and windows, so I'm not even sure where to begin aside from physically connecting everything lol
Thanks, dirt4618, your response is very helpful. I tried the AliBaba site but they are unable to take credit card payments for some reason. I also felt a little uncomfortable about the security of their site and my financial transaction if I bought from them. The Merimobiles site has the Dock at a little higher price but does business with US customers via Canada so I feel a little better about dealing with them.
I can answer the question in regards to the USB on the dock, When I did the review I simply used a thumb drive and a keyboard / mouse to test it. I'm not sure about the 'power' that those extenders use?
As for docks, many have been getting them online. I had a chunk of 20 but they went in 36 hours. I may have a few more coming in but I tend to keep it quiet until I have anything in my hand.
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.
Click to expand...
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.
Click to expand...
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.
On my quest to make an adapter to use my Atrix Lapdock with my S4 I already destroyed an mhl adapter, and now I want to try this dock from ebay.
Has anyone had any experience with it?
Let me know, looks nice.
Sent from my GT-I9505 using xda app-developers app
Be careful. I bought one of these on Amazon a while back...
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00C4CVT7A/ref=oh_details_o09_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
...and I realize it might not be the same exact thing, but it looks similar in construction.
About 2 weeks after I started using it, it started shorting out and sparking! I was lucky that I was right beside it when it started happening and got my phone out of it before any damage was done. The problem was with the wiring / circuitry in the base of the unit. I threw it away immediately.
So, hopefully your will work a lot better, just be careful.
scott14719 said:
Be careful. I bought one of these on Amazon a while back...
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00C4CVT7A/ref=oh_details_o09_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
...and I realize it might not be the same exact thing, but it looks similar in construction.
About 2 weeks after I started using it, it started shorting out and sparking! I was lucky that I was right beside it when it started happening and got my phone out of it before any damage was done. The problem was with the wiring / circuitry in the base of the unit. I threw it away immediately.
So, hopefully your will work a lot better, just be careful.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the info. I usually buy stuff from DX, so I'm quite used to opening and doing a good quality check for every item I buy before using it!
I got the item, it works good and the build quality is good.
BUT, when you connect an external power supply, the power to the usb host port gets disconnected and the usb lines get shorted. So you can use either the USB OR the HDMI. There are 3 relays inside the device; by disabling the top one you can do the 500ms short trick and get the HDMI + USB HOST + CHARGING features, but it takes some effort.
gip_mad said:
I got the item, it works good and the build quality is good.
BUT, when you connect an external power supply, the power to the usb host port gets disconnected and the usb lines get shorted. So you can use either the USB OR the HDMI. There are 3 relays inside the device; by disabling the top one you can do the 500ms short trick and get the HDMI + USB HOST + CHARGING features, but it takes some effort.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you able to use or make a charge only cable (only 5V and ground)? That way the USB data lines should not be affected if the charger shorts the data pins.
Or is the one of the relays shorting the data pins inside the adapter?
Sorry, maybe I didn't explain correctly. The adapter shorts the phone's usb data pins, everything else is untouched. A delay circuit is implemented too, so it looks like they tried to do the 500ms trick but failed miserably so they sold the dock as is.
has anyone got any further with this project? I have an original Samsung smart dock and have now got the hdmi converters but nothing is shown on the lapdock screen. The adaptors and lapdock work fine as I have had it connected to my sky hd box?
Hi, did you try the adapters with a TV? My adapters work well and send a (distorted) image to the lapdock..
Yes I tried them both ways as an output to a tv and also an input to a moniter
looks pretty interesting. huh
Hello XDA, here's something that has bugged me for a while.
I think everyone has experienced the tired out micro USB cable issue. You know, when the cable won't charge your device unless held at the proper angle, or when it won't even stay inside the device and just slips out. I believe this is caused by the little hook pins on the bottom of the plug getting a little bent or worn out.
This happens to me a lot. I operate heavy equipment all day and my phone is always bouncing around while charging. I think this bends the micro USB plug and I have to replace my micro USB cables like every couple months. Sometimes more.
So my question is, is this an issue with usb-c? I've searched online a lot and can't seem to find anything on it. This issue is a big deal to me since I'm pretty rough on my cables. Is it going to be a problem? Has anyone had this issue with a usb-c cable?
Thanks a ton everyone
,dratao
Sent from my LG-D852 using Tapatalk
troyhatchard said:
Hello XDA, here's something that has bugged me for a while.
I think everyone has experienced the tired out micro USB cable issue. You know, when the cable won't charge your device unless held at the proper angle, or when it won't even stay inside the device and just slips out. I believe this is caused by the little hook pins on the bottom of the plug getting a little bent or worn out.
This happens to me a lot. I operate heavy equipment all day and my phone is always bouncing around while charging. I think this bends the micro USB plug and I have to replace my micro USB cables like every couple months. Sometimes more.
So my question is, is this an issue with usb-c? I've searched online a lot and can't seem to find anything on it. This issue is a big deal to me since I'm pretty rough on my cables. Is it going to be a problem? Has anyone had this issue with a usb-c cable?
Thanks a ton everyone
,dratao
Sent from my LG-D852 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would like to also ping this thread as I am wondering the same thing. My last 2 phones required me to start angling the cables so that they would charge (likely based on the wear and tear of inserting and removing the cables).
So, is the design of USB-C more, less or the same reliability as micro-USB from a port longevity perspective?
Hi,
I prepare a world tour for 1 year with departure this summer.
I have a tower PC and a Pixel C (just the tablet actually). So I can't take the PC with me for a problem of size
So I tell myself let's go with Pixel C ! And I'm here for wise advises.
Which accessorize are necessary for a suitable equipment for my trip ?
I think to the Keyboard google and a bluetooth mouse.
Do you think it's ok with this ? Wich accessories in more for you ?
Or don't take the Pixel C, it's very laborious ?
Thanks in advance for your advices and maybe on the road
This USBC hub/ethernet adapter should cover you for a lot of stuff. Use any mouse via the usb port, and definitely get the Google Keyboard. I use this setup for my onsite toolkit and only take my pixel c on vacation, no more laptop for me!
http://www.amazon.com/Anker-Ethernet-Including-ChromeBook-Aluminum/dp/B00XU6PM68
A year is a long time. The main issue you'll have with long term travel around the world is damage to your tablet, unexpected bad weather, and sustained access to reliable electricity with good power sockets. You must also be able to cope with the Pixel C getting totally messed up if you tweaked it.
Personally I like the magnetic keyboard, but the most protective would be the folio keyboard as it protects the rear also. I use a regular 10" size foam case I got years ago for a netbook for packing protection. A waterproof bag to handle the worst nature can throw at you. A small 16L type size will be enough. There are waterproof foam protective cases.
You need to be able to survive a bad ROM and a need to restore, so some kind of USB storage external to make the odd TWRP Recovery backup. Either a Type-C connector or another type and an adapter. The adapter is a good idea as it lets you use other chargers/cables.
To survive a bricked Pixel C you'll need a PC with fastboot and ADB. One trick is to make a bootable USB stick with Ubuntu and install the fastboot and adb software. You can then borrow a laptop and boot it off the stick and then fix your Pixel C, without having to install anything on the borrowed laptop.
A moderately large USB battery. A compact one like 10000mah. Ones which charge faster like off 3A would be better.
A multiport USB charger, so you can make fast use of time near mains power. The Pixel C is my only full Type-C on USB3 device, and there aren't many type-C 3A output multiports. So imagine you're moving a lot and all your batteries going flat and you got like 30min-1hr near a mains socket, and its located at an awkward location.
Avoid chargers where the PSU is right off the plug, as they are a weight which simply falls out of an unreliable power socket, go for the type with a long cord and you put the local socket adaptor on so its light weight in the plug.
Below are not recommendations, they are illustrative examples.
Multiport power adapter https://www.anker.com/products/A2053111
USB battery https://www.anker.com/products/A1371011
Case, this one is too big so look around http://www.amazon.com/Lacdo-Waterpr...r_1_20?srs=10611327011&ie=UTF8&qid=1461473826
Thank you for your answers.
The bag is a good idea for Pixel's protection. I think before at a freezer bag for humidity but at 12 € the bag, it's better I go look if they have at the perfect size.
For the Kyeboard, the magnetic keyboard will be protect in the waterproof bag so he has my preference and the folio keyboard isn't available in France
Fot the hub, with information and search I have an hesitation about two Anker that proposed by "jptechnical" : (sorry not possible to put links because new user)
- Anker : Three USB 3.0 ports and one USB-C recharging port
- Anker : Two USB 3.0 ports, One Ethernet and one USB-C recharging port
I don't know if i have more interest for the third Usb 3 or the Ethernet Why not a hub with 3 usb + Ethernet who allow charge ?
I have three questions about these hub :
- Can I use it and charging the Pixel in the same time ?
- Can I charging Pixel + Smartphone with ?
- If I connect Pixel + smartphone + External Hard disk, can I transfer Photo from Smartphone to Hard disk ?
For The external battery I go take one, she seems very well but a few expensive so I continued my search.
For the wall Charger, I'm less seduce because for use it, you need a power outlet so I can directly connect the Pixel C and the external battery can help it seems to me.
I've been doing a fair bit of travel and I used to have a TF201. (Android Transformer Prime)
The main things I can tell you about my experience with that is.
1. Cover. Its always getting thrown around on desks and other surfaces.
2. Picture Uploads. Throughout all of my trips I made a point of regularly uploading all the pictures and videos I took on the trip to the cloud in case of loss or stolen camera/s.
That being said I would suggest like the previous person a good hub! Preferably one with the right ports for your camera cards. (Micro SD and SD?)
3. Power. Extra long power cables are great!! and battery pack for on the go charging for both your phone and tablet. If you have the right cords you can charge your phone off the tablet anyways which is always a bonus.
4. Connectivity. Both the pixel C and my last tablet were WiFi only. So I've found the best way to stay connected is buying a local sim-card and hot-spotting from the phone where WiFi isn't available. Which refers back to #3. Hot-Spotting chews power.
And the last thing I would suggest is a power board. Its come in handy for all my travels. I just buy 1x international adapter and have all my local power units plugged into the one board! Makes it much easier IMO.
Other than that Enjoy your trip!
Thank you for all your answers, just to equip now
empacher90 said:
Hi,
I prepare a world tour for 1 year with departure this summer.
I have a tower PC and a Pixel C (just the tablet actually). So I can't take the PC with me for a problem of size
So I tell myself let's go with Pixel C ! And I'm here for wise advises.
Which accessorize are necessary for a suitable equipment for my trip ?
I think to the Keyboard google and a bluetooth mouse.
Do you think it's ok with this ? Wich accessories in more for you ?
Or don't take the Pixel C, it's very laborious ?
Thanks in advance for your advices and maybe on the road
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would recommend a Chromecast, that way you could even connect your Pixel C to a friend's TV Screen or use mirracast in a hotel room to watch some stuff on the TV in your hotel room. All the Best