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USB Host Controller - Looking into android controlled robotic projects

Hello everyone. I have been searching for threads all day and have not found much information about being able to hook up devices into some kinda of USB interface or serial interface on Android devices. The closest thing I can find is this: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1202082
There has to be a host controller on these phones right? I would think that if there is a micro SD read reader on the phone, there would be one. Am I the only one thinking this? What is the best way to find out?
My inspiration comes from the ArduPilot project . I think this is pretty sweet but I think it could be way more powerful with a full operating system versus a limited micro controller. An additional fun link of, what most can imagine, my final goal: http://www.wimp.com/helmetcam/
I am posting this on the Evo 4G general thread due to owning it and it would be easy to disassemble, if there is something I need to look into.
I want to look finding (or creating) a robotics application for the android OS to map *connected* servo controllers (not bluetooth connected, Arduino powered, etc..) that will also allow remote users to control the phone multiple threads to control the UV or UAV. Examples: 1: Flying the RC Plane while viewing the video stream on the phone's multiple cameras (integrated or attached). 2: Executing autopilot application and monitoring it's progress through two-way communication from a controlling "base" station (PC, Server, Tablet, etc..). Maybe executing multiple RC vehicles at once.
I have a feeling that this would help many others with other types of monitoring projects (What comes to mind: Home security, Car Security, garden monitoring, etc..) This could also help the creation of other commercial products.
Any input and direction you can give would be appreciated.

Custom Media Device

I hope my inquiry does not sound stupid as I am not familiar with the smartphone modding scene.
I am looking to build or modify an Android device and turn it in to a high capacity media (Keyword: Media) player with around 1 TB of capacity since those morons at Apple won't get off their lazy asses and take the f*ing hard drive out of the iPod classic and slap it into an iPod Touch... I mean "iPhone with the phone"... idiots, anyways that is why I want to do this.
I have a large music collection, at 320kbps my music sits at about 450 GB and I would like to have a device that can hold all my music plus my favorite movies, TV shows, photos, and because I am looking at Android, my favorite Android games.
My first question is, is this possible or will I have to keep dreaming and hoping that some tech giant will clearly do what is technically possible today before I get old and die.
My second question is, I will need a custom ROM with a unique interface designed to be a media player and does not have a web browser, messaging app, etc... A ROM that functions like the iPod classic OS and supports everything iTunes supports including playcounts, ratings, smartplaylist, etc but designed for a touch screen player. Where would I find a ROM like this or who would make it.

how about trying "audio galaxy" ? before we go tearing **** apart and making custom Frankenstein creations . you will have every song on your computer available on your phone playlists all of that. with out a single file being on your device. it uses your phones data network, i guess its the cloud thing they talk about . i use it everyday i highly recommend it

So technically attaching a hard drive to a smart phone is possible. The biggest problem is size, a 1 tb drive is still a large drive, much larger than your phone. The bigger problem is power. Hard drives require tons and tons of power and even SSDs require a good chunk (on the order of one to two watts depending on operation). I know there are roms that focus on basic functionality but I don't know if any are geared specifically for being only music players.

I can offer u a 25%, including only a custom android os with music and video playback apps and wifi-bt-usb connectivity. And any app u need for ur media player. ( if u can buy a hd2 its the best for android-wp7.5 dual boot. And a lot of devs for it now)
Sent from my HTC HD2 using xda premium

At this stage even 250 Gb,s is almost impossible without having an enourmous piece of hardware, and you will need a fast prossesor, and a HUGE battery, the UI is possible
Sent from my HTC_Amaze_4G using XDA

I suppose this would be possible. If your phone supports USB host mode, you could try simply using a 1TB external hard drive.
After some searching around, I came across an article on the topic.
Step 1
You need to prepare your external HDD by formatting it to FAT32. If you have stuff in your hard drive, which is in NTFS state, you should move it temporarily to some other media while you prepare your hard drive.
This is perhaps the only downside to this procedure. But depending on your usage you can make this step worth your effort. This is just a one time only step so don’t be afraid to carry out the arduous task of moving your items from and to your HDD.
Step 2
Connect your portable HDD to your tablet.
Step 3
Make sure your USB switch state is set to ‘Host’. Get this free USB Mode Switcher app if you don’t know how to do it.
Step 4
Switch to your file manager app and wait for it to detect your hard drive. It might take sometime for the app to detect your external drive during which time you should keep refreshing, but once it has detected, the streaming is flawless.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Source:
http://hackslurp.com/2011/08/21/how...m-external-hard-drive-to-your-android-tablet/

[Q] Direct communication with other Android device?

I'm working to develop an application to use a rooted Nook STR as a handheld data input platform, which then sends the data to another Android device (tablet or phone; TBD) acting as a hub. From what I've been able to determine, the options for communications between the devices are:
Bluetooth
-Possibly available using a dongle, USB OTG cable, and enabling USB host mode as described here. This doesn't seem practical within the time/budget/scale of our application.
Wi-Fi
-Wi-Fi Direct would be ideal, but requires either Android 4.x or a patch/hack to enable it, which I haven't seen anyone working on (correct me if I'm wrong about this)
-Separate Wi-Fi hub to manage communications between the devices
Is there an alternative, implementable within reasonable time and cost, to facilitate device-to-device communications wirelessly and without additional separate hardware? My research hasn't turned up any solutions that aren't extremely awkward, but I'm relatively new to this, so hopefully someone has a better idea or knows of an obvious possibility that I'm missing.

Preping for the Sheild to arrive.

I've ordered my shield, it should arrive on the 23rd.
While I wait I thought I would get some suggestions for things I may want to do before it arrives; download software, buy any accessories, etc.
My current PC wont be able to stream with out something like SplashTop. I'm building a new rig in the next few months but until then I have to rely on the shield's hardware till then.
Section 1: PC Prep.
*note: I have never used an android device before, but I'm a quick adapter.
1• Is there any software I should get installed on my PC now before it arrives?
2• Is there any shield rom files I should look into at this point?
Section 2: Android-ware
I am sure this has been discussed a lot already:
1• As a first time Android user, could i get some suggestions for some of the better:
1•2 Games for the shield.
1•3 General Apps.
2• I am a big nostalgia gamer, love just about any and all consoles/hand-helds I can emulate, I was wondering which are the best emulators out there so far?
*by that I mean the name of the best emulator per console, not just what systems it can emulate.
Section 3: Accessories
1• Would like to know if there are any "must have" accessories to get for the shield, be they specific for the shield or a general product, I'd like to know.
2• I saw the Nyko docking unit, and know it isn't available yet. I was wondering would one of those wireless charge pad things work? If so can you suggest a good one?
Thanks for any and all suggestions.

On the PC part of the beauty of android compared to iOS or windows phone is the fact that you need *no* software. Plug micro USB into shield, plug other end into PC. It might do the installing device driver screen as a formality but after that it will be listed as a device in my computer, you can open it and browser around the contents of the SD card and Shield storage. Great huh?
Just drag and drop your music into the relevant folders, I no longer have a working android device so I dont recall what the correct folder actually is, I think it might be sdcard/media/audio, although creating a new folder called Music in the root directory of either the external SD or the internal storage (extsd and sdcard respectively) and sticking it in there works. There are itunes plugins for those that prefer them, think there is a way for windows media player to sync libraries too.
ROMs I dont think there are any for the Shield yet, one is being worked on but for now if your new to android, ignore.
Plenty of android games out there. 2 casual games to get started, beach buggy blitz and Dead Trigger (both support hardware controls hence why I mention them, and they are free). But seriously, there are tons.
I cant live without ES File Explorer. Beyond that, I tend to get BBC news and steam, I steer well clear of the facebook app as that just annoys me (browser it) but do keep twitter. None of them particularly support the shield controls though.
There are lists online of like the 50 must have android apps and games etc. Take a look at them.
Emulator wise someone posted a list of their favourite emulators for the shield covering quite a large range of console. The Shield will emulate anything right upto PS1 and N64. Might do more powerful still, but that would require someone to make an emulator for that. Anything below PS1 or N64 it should be fine with. Retroarch is meant to be a good start. Some consoles you may require a bios file first (primarily PS1) which is copyrighted material so no one on XDA can tell you where to get it unfortunately.
The wireless charge mats require a device which supports wireless charging. The shield doesnt. No one makes a skin for the shield with a wireless charge coil yet either (they did for some other devices). Only android accessory that I get as a must have is a USB host cable. Awesome little tools, microUSB plug on one side and a USB socket on the other so you can plug mice and keyboards into your android device. Otherwise, just make sure you have a micro USB cable around, maybe some headphones and a microSD.

Home Automation [Ard vs Rasp vs IOIO]

Hello,
I would like to hear some opinions about my personal want-sth-to-do project. I want to use NFC to open my house doors, including the front door, garage and bedrooms door. In addition, I want to be able to control my air-conditioning system, TV and audio system. I want to integrate some sort of IP/CCTV cameras into my personal system. Just to improve the system, I will develop a Android App to control it via an API.
So, to make this project possible, come to my mind three ways:
1. [Arduino]
- Using the Arduino and its shields to develop the entire system. It will take a while and be hard in some points such as IPCAM recording.
2. [RaspberryPi + Arduino]
- Using the RaspberryPi connected to some Arduino shields using the GertDuino (GPIO expansion boards that make RaspberryPi compatible with Arduino Shields).
- This options seems to be the best option for now, but I dont know if RaspberryPi is able to handle the entire system.
3. [IOIO-OTG]
- IOIO-OTG is a board that make any android device as the heart of the system, making you just program in Java and control the GPIO and UART.
- The benefit is that I can develop it using some Android Stick, however, I need to search about available shields for it.
In addition, I need to think how to separate the core of the system from the sensors such as nfc readers. I do not think that wiring over the entire house is the best way... but I didn't found any wireless sensors...
Someone want to give some opinion? I will update the thread with the sensors I'm looking around and so...

I'd go the arduino (maybe more than one) + raspberry-pi (maybe more than one) way.
the ioio seems to be some µc that runs a firmware that connects to android and provides all i/o pins to android... so nothing you couldn't do yourself with an arduino or something similar.
I'd start with the devices you want to connect. Air conditioning might be controlled using Infrared emitters - would that work?
NFC Readers can be built from an arduino AFAIK, but you'll need some sort of field bus or wireless connection between all the parts...

SkzBR said:
Hello,
I would like to hear some opinions about my personal want-sth-to-do project. I want to use NFC to open my house doors, including the front door, garage and bedrooms door. In addition, I want to be able to control my air-conditioning system, TV and audio system. I want to integrate some sort of IP/CCTV cameras into my personal system. Just to improve the system, I will develop a Android App to control it via an API.
So, to make this project possible, come to my mind three ways:
1. [Arduino]
- Using the Arduino and its shields to develop the entire system. It will take a while and be hard in some points such as IPCAM recording.
2. [RaspberryPi + Arduino]
- Using the RaspberryPi connected to some Arduino shields using the GertDuino (GPIO expansion boards that make RaspberryPi compatible with Arduino Shields).
- This options seems to be the best option for now, but I dont know if RaspberryPi is able to handle the entire system.
3. [IOIO-OTG]
- IOIO-OTG is a board that make any android device as the heart of the system, making you just program in Java and control the GPIO and UART.
- The benefit is that I can develop it using some Android Stick, however, I need to search about available shields for it.
In addition, I need to think how to separate the core of the system from the sensors such as nfc readers. I do not think that wiring over the entire house is the best way... but I didn't found any wireless sensors...
Someone want to give some opinion? I will update the thread with the sensors I'm looking around and so...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I find your ambition high. But as someone running an Insteon Smart Home with an ISY994i, I can't help but feel you are trying to make a fairly cost effective and secure option more expensive and less secure. Mobilinc integrates with tasker, so you could set it up to unlock doors and stuff pretty easy with NFC.
Best of luck with your search.

me likes

DThought said:
I'd go the arduino (maybe more than one) + raspberry-pi (maybe more than one) way.
the ioio seems to be some µc that runs a firmware that connects to android and provides all i/o pins to android... so nothing you couldn't do yourself with an arduino or something similar.
I'd start with the devices you want to connect. Air conditioning might be controlled using Infrared emitters - would that work?
NFC Readers can be built from an arduino AFAIK, but you'll need some sort of field bus or wireless connection between all the parts...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree with DThought. Including a Raspberry Pi would allow some pretty intense processing power.
If you want to limit the amount of wiring you do, you could actually use a USB wifi dongle on the Raspberry Pi. You could then make some simple protoboards/PCBs with an Arduino with a wireless shield for each thing you want to control. This would likely be a more expensive solution than plain wiring but it would allow a lot of flexibility. Especially if you had each of the Arduino clients very similar so that they are interchangeable.
You could also try using Xbee Arduino wireless shields in case you don't want to use regular wifi.
This sounds like a very good project. I hope it works out for you. :laugh: