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[Q] USB host mode, specifically via Nebtop

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.
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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.

[Q] USB Hosting on ICS, possible for the G2x?

Hi. I've just recently tried out an app from the market that would let me control emulators and some games with a Wii remote, but it wasn't compatible with my G2x. However, I stumbled upon what is most commonly known as "OTG" cable, but discovered they were worthless for the G2x as of now because 2.3 doesn't have USB hosting.
What I wanted to know is, number one, will the G2x have USB hosting when the official 4.0 update comes out, or is it missing some special hardware needed for that? And number two, is there any risks in just getting a cheap MicroUSB to Female USB cable from a trusted seller? Like, can it damage any internal parts because of different voltages between devices or something like that? Or is the worst thing that can happen is the cable simply not working?
I'd really appreciate an answer on this one, because USB hosting seems to open up a lot of possibilities with our devices.

The short answer as of right now is NO there aren't any common ways to enable USB Host. With that said, can the Tegra2 chip in the G2x support host mode?...yes. Will it require a custom kernel?...yes. So basically your phone needs to be rooted to say the least and a kernel framework to enable and support it. I'm actually looking into this as we speak but it's looking like it'll be a while.
As for the cable... no most generic micro-USB cable won't work as is. The OTG cables have either a 'grounded' 4th pin or a disconnected 4th in some usb host modes. But either way you either need an OTG cable or if you search online you can find several ways to splice and solder back generic USB.

I have been looking for a while, but there doesn't seem to a custom kernel that supports USB Host mode. I already have USB OTG adapter (mini Male to 4 pin USB female) + arduino board etc.. So are there any custom kernels out there?

oOo B0XeR oOo said:
The short answer as of right now is NO there aren't any common ways to enable USB Host. With that said, can the Tegra2 chip in the G2x support host mode?...yes. Will it require a custom kernel?...yes. So basically your phone needs to be rooted to say the least and a kernel framework to enable and support it. I'm actually looking into this as we speak but it's looking like it'll be a while.
As for the cable... no most generic micro-USB cable won't work as is. The OTG cables have either a 'grounded' 4th pin or a disconnected 4th in some usb host modes. But either way you either need an OTG cable or if you search online you can find several ways to splice and solder back generic USB.
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this^^^
Nothing had really changed on this front, if you want to use Android as an ardi interface, I'd suggest you grab a cheapo phone that supports it out of the box.
Sent from my LG-P999 using Tapatalk

I bring you back to life!!!
Any update on this? Seems ICS/JB roms are out now... any strides in getting OTG to work? I'm looking to make a G2x into a dedicated TV gamer unit to replace my MK808 and forgot about OTG for my air mouse. I have a Bluetooth mouse to get me by but the airmouse was awesome.
I guess I can look for a Bluetooth airmouse as a last resort.

player911 said:
I bring you back to life!!!
Any update on this? Seems ICS/JB roms are out now... any strides in getting OTG to work? I'm looking to make a G2x into a dedicated TV gamer unit to replace my MK808 and forgot about OTG for my air mouse. I have a Bluetooth mouse to get me by but the airmouse was awesome.
I guess I can look for a Bluetooth airmouse as a last resort.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No OTG happiness for the G2X with any ROM and/or Kernel. There is a board from Sparkfun which provides an interface that enables a non-OTG phone to work like one for interfacing to Arduino, etc.
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10748?
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=19967110&postcount=8

[Q] Charging Nexus 9 while using OTG cable/usb hub?

As the title says, I want to charge my Nexus 9 while using a keyboard/mouse and other peripherals that I would have connected to the Nexus 9 through a USB hub. I know it is not always possible to charge through the hub, so I was thinking about something like a 'micro USB splitter" that expands the micro-USB port into 2 micro-USB ports: one for the charger that comes with the Nexus 9, and the second port for a OTG cable/usb hub/etc. Anyone have any thoughts on this?
I did read this post here for the Nexus 7 but not sure if the same is true for the Nexus 9.or if any additional options existed for the 9. Ultimately, I guess I'm wondering if it is unrealistic to expect to find something that charges the device at the same time as using a hub/OTG cable without too much modding or hassle? My device is rooted and I've flashed some mods and tweaked some things on previous devices I've had, but am by no means an expert so I would hope to keep the hacking/modding for something like this to a minimum, if possible. Plus, there's an outside chance I may return the Nexus 9 in the next week so I wouldn't want to get too crazy until I knew for sure I'd be keeping it.
I understand that a specific kernel with certain capabilities may be needed, but I'm unsure how to find out which kernel would work and if it would be compatible with stock ROM or CM12 (when it comes out). Any help would be greatly appreciated. Even if it's a pipe dream, I'd at least know not to continue to waste my time looking for a solution that doesn't exist

I tried this one a few days ago but it did not work: https://sites.google.com/site/sonicboomworld/my-projects/otg-and-charging
Maybe it's possible with the right resistor value.
Edit:
Mod for Nexus 7 - needs kernel support:
https://mehrvarz.github.io/usb-host-mode-power-management-nexus7/

Thanks for the reply - is this kernel still being supported by the dev and is it confirmed working on Nexus 9?

I don't know as i do not own a Nexus 7.
But even if he still supports this kernel it would not help much for the Nexus 9:
A kernel is very hardware specific and the OTG changing issues is even more hardware specific.
There is absolutely no chance that you can simply use the N7 kernel on the N9.
One of the amazing kernel developers (who owns a N9) here at XDA would have to look at it.
Generally I think for "OTG + charging" to work the USB chipset on the device has to support it and/or you have to find out how you could trick the device into enabling this mode (with a certain resistor on the USB connector and/or with a kernel modification).
The bad thing is that no device seems to support the official "USB Accessory Charger Adapter" specification. (see section "OTG micro plugs" here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_On-The-Go for details)

Just to give you more information, there was a nexus 7 kernel by flar2 called ElementalX which had OTG + charging support. He is working on ElementalX for Nexus 9 as well, and he said he may or may not add support for it. If you and maybe others are interested, I'm sure that it will get added upon request.

MWFD said:
As the title says, I want to charge my Nexus 9 while using a keyboard/mouse and other peripherals that I would have connected to the Nexus 9 through a USB hub. I know it is not always possible to charge through the hub, so I was thinking about something like a 'micro USB splitter" that expands the micro-USB port into 2 micro-USB ports: one for the charger that comes with the Nexus 9, and the second port for a OTG cable/usb hub/etc. Anyone have any thoughts on this?
I did read this post here for the Nexus 7 but not sure if the same is true for the Nexus 9.or if any additional options existed for the 9. Ultimately, I guess I'm wondering if it is unrealistic to expect to find something that charges the device at the same time as using a hub/OTG cable without too much modding or hassle? My device is rooted and I've flashed some mods and tweaked some things on previous devices I've had, but am by no means an expert so I would hope to keep the hacking/modding for something like this to a minimum, if possible. Plus, there's an outside chance I may return the Nexus 9 in the next week so I wouldn't want to get too crazy until I knew for sure I'd be keeping it.
I understand that a specific kernel with certain capabilities may be needed, but I'm unsure how to find out which kernel would work and if it would be compatible with stock ROM or CM12 (when it comes out). Any help would be greatly appreciated. Even if it's a pipe dream, I'd at least know not to continue to waste my time looking for a solution that doesn't exist
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The company I work for is developing a OTG cable that does exactly that: lets you charge your phone/tablet while using a USB peripheral.
We are testing it in the UK market currently, but not selling in the US at the moment. You can check it out here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sansys-Char...F8&qid=1417298449&sr=8-1&keywords=usb+otg+mlc
We were thinking about doing a kickstarter or indiegogo for it, but not sure the amount of interest in a niche device like this.

Can you confirm that it is working on the Nexus 9? (and/or the Nexus 5)?
If it is, I'll order one immediately. I've been looking for such a thing since I had my Galaxy S2.

lfrst05 said:
Can you confirm that it is working on the Nexus 9? (and/or the Nexus 5)?
If it is, I'll order one immediately. I've been looking for such a thing since I had my Galaxy S2.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can't confirm that it will work on the Nexus 9, but my partner from China is sending me a sample so I can try it out. I have a Nexus 9 and 5 also, and they'll be the first devices I will test it on.
We've also sent a couple out to some Youtube reviewers as well, so there may be a video review on them soon.

We just put up an Amazon US listing for this cable if any of you in the states want to try it out: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OLKFR44/
I should have one in hand in the middle of the week to test out.

mkygod said:
We just put up an Amazon US listing for this cable if any of you in the states want to try it out: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OLKFR44/
I should have one in hand in the middle of the week to test out.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm really excited to get my hands on one of these! let me know if it works.

mkygod said:
I can't confirm that it will work on the Nexus 9, but my partner from China is sending me a sample so I can try it out. I have a Nexus 9 and 5 also, and they'll be the first devices I will test it on.
We've also sent a couple out to some Youtube reviewers as well, so there may be a video review on them soon.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sweet, this sounds awesome, let us know if it works :fingers-crossed:

mkygod said:
We just put up an Amazon US listing for this cable if any of you in the states want to try it out: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OLKFR44/
I should have one in hand in the middle of the week to test out.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This arrived from Amazon today. Unfortunately I can't get it to work. When the micro usb is plugged into the N9 it lights up blue. At that point I'm able to mount a thumb drive, use a mouse and Playstation controller. But once the other end is plugged into a charger the light goes off and whatever is connected stops working. The N9 begins to charge at that point. If plugged into my PC, same thing.
Note: the blue light goes off when other end is plugged in regardless of if anything else is in use.
BTW, running elementalX kernel and Lollipopalooza rom.

TSman74 said:
This arrived from Amazon today. Unfortunately I can't get it to work. When the micro usb is plugged into the N9 it lights up blue. At that point I'm able to mount a thumb drive, use a mouse and Playstation controller. But once the other end is plugged into a charger the light goes off and whatever is connected stops working. The N9 begins to charge at that point. If plugged into my PC, same thing.
Note: the blue light goes off when other end is plugged in regardless of if anything else is in use.
BTW, running elementalX kernel and Lollipopalooza rom.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've heard some people say in certain other situations with OTG + charge, you need to plug everything in first, then plug the OTG cable into the device. Try that and see if it works?

saadi03 said:
I've heard some people say in certain other situations with OTG + charge, you need to plug everything in first, then plug the OTG cable into the device. Try that and see if it works?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Gave it a shot with this method but still a no go. Tried it on my phone as well with no luck.

TSman74 said:
Gave it a shot with this method but still a no go. Tried it on my phone as well with no luck.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thats a bummer, thanks for the info.

Would we happen to need a kernel that supports simultaneous charging and data transfer? I bought a usb y cable and that only allows me to use one or the other. Which sucks .

Some devices have been known to work with only modified OTG cables such as galaxy tablets and experia phones.

What would this modification be?

I finally got a chance to test out these cables. I thought my first cable was busted so I ordered a 2nd one.
I'm VERY sorry to report that this cable does NOT support USB OTG AND CHARGING AT THE SAME TIME. It is not just your device.
Apparently, there was some miscommunication between me and by business associate in China that lead me to believe that this cable would function this way but it only functions as a USB OTG OR CHARGER CABLE. Language barrier didn't help since I do not speak Chinese and he does not speak English very well. If you read the description, the functionality of this cable is not very clear and obviously written by someone with English as a second language. And also, I can see how the photos can be misleading as well. He went and listed this product on our Amazon account to sell before he even sent me a sample for me to test out and I'm kinda mad at him for doing that.
I was pretty excited at the prospect of it doing OTG and charging at the same time, but now im dismayed that this cable cannot do it. This whole thing was a waste of time to try to bring a product like this to the US that bares little benefit other than being a 2 in 1 cable that can replace a regular USB OTG cable and a Charging cable (albeit a very short charging cable). Sorry that I got your hopes up guys
I do want to clarify exactly what this cable does though: Basically all it does is switch from Charging mode to USB OTG mode depending on how you have it plugged in. If you plug the cable into the mobile device only, the blue light will turn on, letting you know that you can use the USB OTG port. However, once you plug the other end of the cable into a charger, the blue light will turn off, and the cable goes into charging mode. The USB OTG port will not work or light up again until you remove the cable from your charger.

hey there everyone, i'm trying to understand this a bit more. i have the same cable, but my understanding is that it wont work unless the kernel supports it. does anyone know if this is possible to actually fix in the Nexus 9 kernel? i really need this for a project

HDMI Display drivers for LG-H955?

Hi,
Some time ago I bought an OTG (Male microUSB, female USB) cable, and recently I have also found a USB to HDMI cable. Being the curious person I am, I bought it and connected the two. My TV saw the phone, however it says "No signal" which probably means I need some drivers. Does anyone know if such drivers exist and if so then where?
P.S I know - I should have bought a miracast adapter instead, and I will, but I want to know if I can get this working first.
Thanks,
Matt

You need a mhl cable and TV.
Sent from my LG-H950

Kukubski said:
You need a mhl cable and TV.
Sent from my LG-H950
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Does an HDMI cable not work? Why?

Why would it work?

You can't just plug an USB output into hdmi and expect it to magically work. Standard is called MHL.
Sent from my LG-H950

LG uses the other standard named SlimPort that work without external power and is micro-usb to HDMI directly. MHL needs power from external source to output to HDMI and it does not work with our phones at all

Rodoo said:
LG uses the other standard named SlimPort that work without external power and is micro-usb to HDMI directly. MHL needs power from external source to output to HDMI and it does not work with our phones at all
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In this case I have to apologise for providing incorrect info above.
Sent from my LG-H950

Rodoo said:
LG uses the other standard named SlimPort that work without external power and is micro-usb to HDMI directly. MHL needs power from external source to output to HDMI and it does not work with our phones at all
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is absolutely true!!!

Well first of all - I don't know why it would work... I just did that to see if it would work and it didn't and so I went on here to see whether it's me doing something wrong or whether it's just not gonna happen. And secondly - thanks for telling me it's SlimPort, but now it's a bit too late. Next time make sure your information is accurate before you post it.
P.S Just posting this off of another account, I forgot the password to my chmodder one, and didn't have time to reset it.

Otg with charging

Hey guys, I'm fixing to refunction an original Pixel as a 3D printer server (Octoprint), and OTG works a treat, however I cannot keep the phone charged while using OTG.
Is there a working solution for this? I don't mind getting my hands dirty.
Thanks y'all.

It's a bit finicky, you just have to find the right usb-c hub that supports charging and OTG.
one thing I noticed was the usb-c hub I am using supports passthrough PD charging (your pixel stock charger is a PD charger). if your usb-c pd charger power output is too high, i think it might run into issues with the hub.
by chance, my usb-c hub that supports passthrough PD charging is paired with a generic charger.... both the charging and OTG function may sometimes take a few connection attempts to get it working.... trying different combination of plugging in the charger to the hub, OTG device (i use a microsdxc card reader) and plugging into the pixel.
all i can say is good luck!

WhereCoffeeFlowsLikeMud said:
Hey guys, I'm fixing to refunction an original Pixel as a 3D printer server (Octoprint), and OTG works a treat, however I cannot keep the phone charged while using OTG.
Is there a working solution for this? I don't mind getting my hands dirty.
Thanks y'all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hey just wanted to say, funny I should find this thread because I'm trying to achieve the exact same thing (Octoprint server) with an old Galaxy Note 4, and can't for the life of me figure out why OTG charging/data would be disabled. Did you manage to figure out a fix?

peanutismint said:
peanutismint said:
hey just wanted to say, funny I should find this thread because I'm trying to achieve the exact same thing (Octoprint server) with an old Galaxy Note 4, and can't for the life of me figure out why OTG charging/data would be disabled. Did you manage to figure out a fix?
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Click to collapse
Alas, nope - not without soldering directly to the main board. I just gave AliExpress $15 instead and they gave me a Rockchip-based MXQ Pro Android TV box in return (that sits under my printer). I parked Armbian Linux on it, then plugged in a webcam. Working like a dream. Thinking of switching to Klipper at some point, so going the TV box route was probably for the best (on account of the 4 CPU cores, loadsa RAM and internal storage, and the four or five USB ports).
Ps, sorry about the formatting - my phone flipped out cos of some annoying ad.

Thanks for the response; it's unfortunate that a solution like Octoprint 4 Android would be rendered almost pointless by something as assumedly simple as 'device can't charge via USB'.
I have a Raspberry Pi that I can probably get Octoprint running on with a cheap webcam, but I'm going to google that Android TV box you mentioned too because a few other people have mentioned that these are somehow even better/more future-proof than a RPi.