Car installation headache - Nexus 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Ok, so I've been trawling the threads for hours and the time has come to make my first post on this..
Here's what I really want to do, and whether or not, as I understand, I can do it:
Nexus 7 in dash, 3G model - fine, been done loads of times
250GB USB HDD, connected via USB OTG, containing my music library - possibly, depends on my hard drive? Will it work if I can provide a secondary source of power to the HDD (my caddy allows this)
Charge the N7 at the same time - again possibly, with CM10 and kernel mod? Also new to Android so shooting in the dark a bit here.
OPTIONAL/BACKUP IDEAS:
Wi-Fi drive of some sort - If it works then maybe, seems like an extreme option though for a car install.
Google Music and stream my entire collection (I have 15GB monthly data sim that I can use in the N7) - will work but not ideal for me. I have a lot of lossless music which I won't be able to take advantage of this way. Which brings me on to...
USB DAC through OTG cable - possible I know, but to do this on top of the other stuff is gonna be difficult and unreliable? Can live with just the headphone jack output for the time being, unless:
Utilise the pogo pins for a line out and charging - would be a nice solution in the car but again, possible?
It would be fantastic if someone could tie this all together simply for me somehow, or if anyone has any far better ideas for what I'm trying to do :good:
Also feel free to ridicule my noob-ness
Cheers

Related

I want to get the ball rolling using a Hermes/TyTn as a car audio device!

I have had this idea rolling around in my head for a while:
i would like to use my 8525 to play music using whatever media player (TCPMP in my case)
i would like to have a USB, wifi, or bluetooth enabled harddrive mounted under my seat
the things i have ran into is this:
i cannot find a bluetooth enabled external harddrive case. seagate announced one but its vaporware/horribly expensive for 20gb or so (i want 200+gb, 500 most likely)
i do not know if my device/phone will connect to an autonomous wifi enabled external harddrive and browse it because i do not have one, if you have one-- espically if its on the cheap side-- PLEASE TEST!
to be useful, and user friendly, the best idea would be to have one wire that plugs into the phone and runs to the HDD case, this one wire could take the audio out, charge the phone, and possibly transfer data from the HDD to the phone.
at the case there will be the normal power hookups (+12, -12, +12remote) and RCA jacks to lead to your HU (might also need to integrate a preamp)

[Q] Audio Through USB

I'm currently aching to be able to play my own music through my car speakers, weird place for this yes.. if it's the wrong section to post this please let me know.
But, I was wondering if it's at all possible to feed the phone's audio through the USB.
For example, I have a USB port on my stero in my car, and when I plug it in..i'm able to feed off my SD card to play the music thats on it. But.. I'd like to be able to play pandora as well..which I'm currently unable to do.
Was wondering if this is possible. If i've confused you feel free to ask more questions
XtaC318 said:
Since it isn't possible.. what about an app that allows me to control the music played? I can stream music from the sd, but its got to mount to read therefore I don't have access to the stock music app. Only way to control what's played is the buttons on the stero and its pain staking..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't believe this is possible. As far as I know, when you use the usb the deck itself is decoding the mp3's (or whatever music files you're using) directly. It doesn't support playing music through the usb, it just uses the usb to get the files. I hope that makes sense...
So is that why I ca never plat music on my xbox whenever I have a phone hookedup to charge? I thought my xbox just didn't play nice with phones
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
XtaC318 said:
I'm currently aching to be able to play my own music through my car speakers, weird place for this yes.. if it's the wrong section to post this please let me know.
But, I was wondering if it's at all possible to feed the phone's audio through the USB.
For example, I have a USB port on my stero in my car, and when I plug it in..i'm able to feed off my SD card to play the music thats on it. But.. I'd like to be able to play pandora as well..which I'm currently unable to do.
Was wondering if this is possible. If i've confused you feel free to ask more questions
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So your car stereo has a USB input but no auxiliary? If so, your best bet would probably be to get an FM transmitter. Like the poster above said, your car's stereo is merely mounting your phone as a mass storage device and reading the mp3 files off the SD card and decoding and playing them locally.
It sees it as you do on the computer, just a drive. The only way to get what you want is to use a source from the phone that plays audio. Head phone jack or Blue Tooth. Your stereo... if it has USB should also have an AUX input or BT. Havn't come across to many that have USB and not an AUX or BT. Its nice though... having Pandora in the car.
If you tell me the Model of the Stereo I can help you out. I have seen a BT to FM Mod. Those are kinda cool. If your in a pinch with a stock stereo.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk
a454nova said:
It sees it as you do on the computer, just a drive. The only way to get what you want is to use a source from the phone that plays audio. Head phone jack or Blue Tooth. Your stereo... if it has USB should also have an AUX input or BT. Havn't come across to many that have USB and not an AUX or BT. Its nice though... having Pandora in the car.
If you tell me the Model of the Stereo I can help you out. I have seen a BT to FM Mod. Those are kinda cool. If your in a pinch with a stock stereo.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Makes sense. My stero does have an auxiliary port on it, but due to recent events I'm really short on cash lol, was wondering if there was a work around so I'm not limited to my sd for music.
Since it isn't possible.. what about an app that allows me to control the music played? I can stream music from the sd, but its got to mount to read therefore I don't have access to the stock music app. Only way to control what's played is the buttons on the stero and its pain staking..
XtaC318 said:
Makes sense. My stero does have an auxiliary port on it, but due to recent events I'm really short on cash lol, was wondering if there was a work around so I'm not limited to my sd for music.
Since it isn't possible.. what about an app that allows me to control the music played? I can stream music from the sd, but its got to mount to read therefore I don't have access to the stock music app. Only way to control what's played is the buttons on the stero and its pain staking..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope... The phone isn't even connecting to your stereo. When you put it into USB mode so it can read the SD, it unmounted from the phone. Its as if you pulled the SD out and slid it into a card reader. When you pull the plug... It will remount to the phone. You'll notice it scanning for media at the top.
Now when you go BT... You can control it via the stereo or phone, using the Aux you can control it by the phone. "They" could make the phone controllable via USB like an Iphone but they would have to built that into the stereo like they do the Iphones/Ipods. Not likely to happen unless the Galaxy S takes off like IPOD did.
In theory, a rooted Epic with proper kernel support and hacked cable (since they don't exist commercially) can repurpose the data pins on its USB port for left and right analog audio thanks to the Fairchild FSA9480 USB switching chip inside the phone (the same chip enables the USB pins to be repurposed as a serial port with nonstandard voltage levels, enables the normally-unused fifth pin to be used as mic input, enables it to be used with a special "JIG" interface for JTAG reflashing without having to hand-solder anything to the microscopic internal pads, and apparently can also work its magic in conjunction with a chip by Silicon Imaging to use 5 pins to output a signal that can be transformed by a companion chip (embedded in the cable's connector shell) into valid HDCP-compliant HDMI. I'm pretty sure the 9480 can also repurpose the two data pins for external I2C, but don't quote me on it.
Check out the I9000 boards... they're about 2 months ahead of us. If you google for FSA9480, you can find a brief (but revealing) dialogue between a Samsung engineer and the Kernel.org folks regarding a kernel addition to support the chip. He had a few issues, because on one hand he's apparently not allowed to say much about how the chip works or what it does, but the kernel folks managed to wring much of it out of him one juicy detail at a time. If you check Fairchild's site, they don't even acknowledge that the chip EXISTS, but it's been photographed inside all the Galaxy S phones in various teardowns.
In English -- yes, the hardware exists today to connect your phone to a stereo's analog inputs via a cable that repurposes the USB port... but the official software to make it work from Samsung and Sprint doesn't exist, and the information needed to make it work ourselves on a rooted Epic with AOSP isn't quite available yet.
I'm personally quite happy about the uart, because that means we DO have an easy, low-ceremony way to do i/o between something like a gamepad built into a hardcase a-la-iphone-GameBone that doesn't require Bluetooth (note that if something IS using the USB port for UART purposes, the USB port is still active, but the phone sees it as having nothing connected because the signals from the D+ and D- pins are physically re-routed by the 9480 to the CPU's UART pins. Think of the 9480 as being like an old-fashioned telephone panel with cables that can be moved around to connect the USB port's 5 physical pins to different pins inside the phone.
I'm now pretty sure that this is why there are exactly 7 contacts on the microUSB connector inside the phone -- 5 are used to get the pre-HDMI signals out of the phone, and the other 2 (3, if you count the ground/anchor tabs and assume they carry a signal as well in addition to mechanically anchoring it in place) are used to supply +5v and ground, and possibly one wire for half-duplex signaling purposes.
Wow that was a lot of info... lol. I didn't know that about the usb tho. That's good to know. I was thinking of taking it apart to see.
But... I think he's wanting a UI via the USB like the way some players will do for the IPODs, not analog. To go throught all that when the Head Phone jack will do the same... I could only see that if it was broken or if you really really want only one cord to the phone.
; )
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk
I've got an Alpine unit, I hook my USB up - turn on the TUNER. Mount the Drive and once the phone is done - swap back over to USB and i can get all my MP3S. sadly I get all of my ringtones too - odd when the radio is full blast and a track changes - none the less works well for me. Try it.
I purchased this Kensington LiquidAUX Bluetooth Car Kit for my phone a few days ago. It works perfectly on my sister's iPod touch (no AVRCP [silly apple]) and an old WinMo 6.1 phone.
I just got my Epic in the mail today so I'll be testing it out soon.
WTF. AVRCP (bluetooth remote control) is really buggy with this phone. I used the LiquidAUX with an old Omnia for a week with no problems. The Epic connects and plays audio just fine. I can also pause and play music but the forward and back buttons don't work. When I first pair the phone with the device everything is fine, but after disconnecting and reconnecting the remote control stops working. I got it to work after un-paring and re-pairing but it only worked once.
The Moment I had before this had really choppy audio.
EDIT: I had the phone opened up in DDMS and the phone is receiving signals from the remote. But it only reacts to them when the media player is on the screen. Weird.

Galaxy Tab Teardown

here you can find how the Galaxy Tab is constructed :
http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Samsung-Galaxy-Tab-Teardown/4103/1
and intrestingly here there is the datasheet of the wifi/bt/fm chip:
http://pdf.eccn.com/pdfs/Datasheets/Broadcom/BCM4329.pdf
as you can see it got fm support and not only a receiver but also a transmitter meaning that implementing support at kernel level you could listen your mp3 or whatever you want on your car radio!
it got double simultaneous stereo bt output support ! wow
as you can see bt spec are about 2.1+edr and not 3.0 ... why?
cause bt3.0 is simply a bt2.1edr+wifi support for large files...so hardware is the same , only software support is needed for 3.0!
you can see the collaborative support bt+wifi described inside the datasheet and even wimax support!
I am interested in knowing if it is possible to power a portable hdd from the tab. I recently tried to plug my portable 1tb usb powered hdd into the tab via a usb to micro adaptor I got on eaby. It all connects up, however there is not power to the drive. I wonder if any tech guys who break these things down would know if there is a switch or program that would make this possible. This way, I can have 1 tb of vids and apps instead of 16gb on an sd card.
dubie, I have already answered this question in your thread about the matter, and even went as far as to explain WHY it will not work. Please do not hijack other's threads, especially for info that was answered in your own thread about the matter.
On another note, cheers for the links Triplex Good to see the innards of our tab hehe.
just a quick OT answer to dubie...
usb host function is not supported from the tab at the moment but this is not the only problem.
to work properly an external usb 2.5" hard drive needs almost 500mA, it doesn't need (the best one!) that much of juice when working but when starting to spin it needs double the mA cause there is a peak just as it happens for car battery where specs are different for start amperage (peak) and continuos one.
galaxy tab can't provide 500mA, better can't provide at all cause the usb is not a feeded one type.there are phones and tabs where the usb works as an host but they needed an external power supply to feed the hard-disk if you want to connect one.usb host on mobile stuff is just there for static memory, pendrives,external hid peripherals.probably some newer ssd could work good too.
Other than repair and information, are there any mods that can be done by taking one of these apart?

using external mic and an app like garageband (as on iphone)

Hi, I can't see any way to plug an external condensor mic into my new nexus 4, pretty bummed if that is the case.
I would like to use my phone as a portable recorder that can record sounds in at least cd quality and use some sort of mic I will have to buy.
Much like everyone is doing with their iphones and garageband, maybe the nexus isn't able to do it, there is no hardware problem, my 1st ibook with a 512 mb memory could do this without a single issue, I imagine this device can do it but maybe it isn't made with any thought of getting external audio into it ?
Makes me thing I need an iphone after all.
blendobass said:
Hi, I can't see any way to plug an external condensor mic into my new nexus 4, pretty bummed if that is the case.
I would like to use my phone as a portable recorder that can record sounds in at least cd quality and use some sort of mic I will have to buy.
Much like everyone is doing with their iphones and garageband, maybe the nexus isn't able to do it, there is no hardware problem, my 1st ibook with a 512 mb memory could do this without a single issue, I imagine this device can do it but maybe it isn't made with any thought of getting external audio into it ?
Makes me thing I need an iphone after all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
USB OTG (On the go) is not supported in this phone by stock. None of the developers have been able to figure it out as of now but it may be possible. Another limitation is the voltage the USB hardware is able to provide which we do not know for sure yet. If it is lower than usb spec (and hence USB OTG is not supported stock) then you won't be able to power your mic with the phone.
TL;DR No this phone won't accept your usb microphone, maybe in the future with further research by devs.
smacksa said:
USB OTG (On the go) is not supported in this phone by stock. None of the developers have been able to figure it out as of now but it may be possible. Another limitation is the voltage the USB hardware is able to provide which we do not know for sure yet. If it is lower than usb spec (and hence USB OTG is not supported stock) then you won't be able to power your mic with the phone.
TL;DR No this phone won't accept your usb microphone, maybe in the future with further research by devs.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That really sucks, lol.. and it did say this phone has "OTG" usb on the google page for the specs for the phone, no ?
Now i see why i need an iphone, i can't even find a note taking program i can manually sync between mac and android (like I did with my blackberry for 10 years) without using cloud storage and stuff, I don't want my stuff on a cloud.
Yes the original marketing material referred to the device having USB OTG. It was removed sometime near release and the rumor we have is that the device can't provide the full 5V required by USB specifications.
As far as no cloud solutions, I'm not really sure what your apprehensions are. Apple is going to sync your notes the same way Google/Evernote would. The days of using a cable to sync your device have passed.
he's trolling...he knows this phone doesnt have OTG
Closing thread.....

My S2 as a Smart TV hub idea

Hi all,
I had my S2 for a while now and I'm thinking of just connecting it to my TV to be use as a smart hub (media centre) as I don't have a smart TV. I'm sure I'm not alone with an aging S2 and moving onto a newer smart phone.
My Idea are:
- connect the S2 via HDMI to the TV
- use a small Bluetooth keyboard with track pad or maybe some other remote.
- try out probably XBMC
- Disable any phone feature from it (ie phone, sms, etc..)
My goal are:
- use it as a online player - Netflix, youtube, etc...
- Skype
- video player
- stream video from network
- audio player
This will be my first attempt and will be spending some money for the accessories.
Has anyone done a similar set up.
It will be great for some opinions or advice. Or issues it might not work.
Interesting idea.
You might want to think about how you're going to use it with the limited battery life first, because you won't be able to charge the phone when connected through HDMI.
I already do this occasionally albiet minus the keyboard atm,... I use it on short breaks away I took my Mhl cable and a short 1m hdmi cable to plug into the tv in the hotel room using Catchup TV app for more channels than they offered and TV Portal for streaming (free hotel Wi-Fi ftw! )... also use it for some other stuff such as watching avis I have already put on my 32gig card and finally playing my music collection through the tv speakers
re: power supply Mhl cable needs power/charger cable to work anyway also it charges at the same time
I always carry a spare charger
crobat said:
Interesting idea.
You might want to think about how you're going to use it with the limited battery life first, because you won't be able to charge the phone when connected through HDMI.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
of course the phone charges when connected to hdmi. it does not even work if not plugged into the power outlet first.
Flog your S2 and buy a Pendroid.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B007FR9OIK
Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda premium
Raspberry pi with xbmc
Sent from my GT-I9100P using Tapatalk 2
Thanks guys.
I got a mhl cable and it's awesome. just plug it in and it works straight away. Got the cheap version though but I guess it won't make that much difference. All I need to do is get a mod to permanently set it up as landscape mode and probably increase screen size. Will look for a new rom probably that can cater the mod.
Just need to figure this all out before spending more on a keyboard.
I had pretty much the same idea. Works well. Here is my thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2569613
I am going to try running xbmc and see how that goes.
Just to let you know, I installed xbmc...details on my thread (see the above post!)

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