Database Users

external webcam

has anyone tried? and will it work?

raindizzle said:
has anyone tried? and will it work?
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Nothing like that will work without drivers. If you had linux drivers you might be able to make something work, but it would not be plug and play.

ske714 said:
Nothing like that will work without drivers. If you had linux drivers you might be able to make something work, but it would not be plug and play.
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what about those plug and play webcams with installed drivers on them already? shouldn't that work since it is both windows/linux compatible? just as the same how external hard drives will work with our archos, and that also have drivers installed in them. (both windows/linux compatible also)

raindizzle said:
what about those plug and play webcams with installed drivers on them already? shouldn't that work since it is both windows/linux compatible? just as the same how external hard drives will work with our archos, and that also have drivers installed in them. (both windows/linux compatible also)
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Ive never seen one, so I don't know for sure. Hopefully someone else will chime in on that. If you have an a70, there is only limited power available from the usb port. 200ma I think. If you try one and it works, be sure and let us know.

raindizzle said:
what about those plug and play webcams with installed drivers on them already? shouldn't that work since it is both windows/linux compatible? just as the same how external hard drives will work with our archos, and that also have drivers installed in them. (both windows/linux compatible also)
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Just an FYI hard drives and cameras do not usually have drivers installed on them.. For example windows uses a driver called usbstor.sys that usb drives must adhere to in order to work properly. Delete this file and all your lovely USB drives in windows will no longer work unless you installed some crazy 3rd party software..
See here for more info

Ok so I just realized that most apps are drivers within itself (correct?) to run basic functions for a specific hardware like say camera effect apps for the camera. So now here is an idea...since the motorola xoom has a stock camera app implemented on the tablet to run both the front camera and a switch to use the rear camera....wouldn't it be possible as a theory to use a plug and play external usb webcam with the archos tablet and install the motorola xooms camera app instead of the archos camera app to use to switch between the front camera and usb camera (being as a rear camera)?
does anyone know where I can get the motorola xoom camera app to download? I would like to try it myself if I can get a hold of that app and just by a cheapo plug and play cam for 6 bucks if no one else is willing to try it...

raindizzle said:
Ok so I just realized that most apps are drivers within itself (correct?) to run basic functions for a specific hardware like say camera effect apps for the camera. So now here is an idea...since the motorola xoom has a stock camera app implemented on the tablet to run both the front camera and a switch to use the rear camera....wouldn't it be possible as a theory to use a plug and play external usb webcam with the archos tablet and install the motorola xooms camera app instead of the archos camera app to use to switch between the front camera and usb camera (being as a rear camera)?
does anyone know where I can get the motorola xoom camera app to download? I would like to try it myself if I can get a hold of that app and just by a cheapo plug and play cam for 6 bucks if no one else is willing to try it...
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An app is not a driver. A driver basically is the interface between the hardware and the app. When an app interacts with hardware, it does so through the driver. That way a vendor can build hardware however they want, as long as they provide a driver that conforms to pre-established specifications so that the software provider can access it with standard commands. That's why the idea of a camera with built in drivers doesn't make sense. The software would not know to address the camera through the USB port. It needs a driver to address which would in turn address the hardware. Support for devices like thumb drives is built into the operating system, so you don't need a driver.

As has been pointed out, they don't have drivers preinstalled; rather they use protocols that are supported by the host operating system (Windows, Mac, etc) out of the box. The type of "plug and play" webcams you're talking about rely on the the universal WDM in Windows along with such protocols or frameworks as DirectShow, TWAIN, etc.
The point is, the host OS has to know how to talk to those plug-and-play webcams, not the other way around. So in the case of the Archos tablet, it would have to have the same support baked into it at the driver level. Which it doesn't.
So unless you're going to reverse-engineer those protocols and write your own Android driver, it's not gonna happen.
In the case of the Motorola Xoom camera app (or the camera app for any other device/phone for that matter), it's specifically coded to the camera chip used in that device, and has no chance of working with an external webcam. Just like it wouldn't work for the camera in my Evo phone, or anything else besides the Xoom. The only chance would be if it was a device that used the exact same camera chip hardware, but the chances of that are slim. Even devices made by the same manufacturer, such as the HTC Evo and the HTC Droid Incredible, use two different camera chips and drivers.

But.. if your usb camera is working with opensource linux drivers (like uvc driver) there is a high chance that it will work on android if someone compiles the missing kernel modules (aka drivers) like I did for dvb devices. AND THEN.. someone has to write an extended camera app which supports selecting different cameras

any advancements with this issue?
I have an archos 80 g9 8gb. I want to plug in my Sony video camera using a firwire to USB cable and an USB to micro adapter. I then want to use my tablet to broadcast on ustream.com. I am in a paranormal group, I use a night vision camera, therefore I need to figure out a way to do this. We currently use an apple laptop that constantly needs to be plugged in. Being able to use the tablet for this would a much better solution for a few reasons.
Has anyone found/made any drivers?

Would be really useful this. I'd donate.

I am in a similar boat as a few others here. I want to switch over to an Android tablet in my truck, but it's pretty large and the need of a rear view / back up camera is a must. During my past 48 hoursearch this is the most useful, and encouraging info that I could find. I am not a coder, but those who are can probably work with the source code I found on this site. I hope this helps us all. Maybe with the release of ICS the difficulty usb hosting for webcams won't require that much effort. Have a look
brain.cc.kogakuin.ac.jp/research/usb-e.html

[Q] What exactly works from the USB port on the Iconia Tab?

I'm looking to get a tablet to introduce BackTrack 5 to. I don't believe this tablet has a wifi chip capable of injection, so I wanted to connect a USB wifi adapter to it (this one right here). I read in the update it's able to register the usb port for usb devices, but which exactly work without me having to create a driver? And, I'm sure there are linux drivers for said USB adapter, I assume I could take that and (easily) create one?

From what I've read so far, the USB port handles things like hard drives, keyboards and flash card readers (and not necessarily all of them).
A Wi-Fi adapter may function under Linux but you would probably have to be rooted on the device to install drivers since they are not natively included in the system build that I know of.

Backtrack 5 works fine on the A500. I'm running it right now. I've had no issues with it.

i posted a thread in the accessories section on compatible usb devices

runeblade said:
Backtrack 5 works fine on the A500. I'm running it right now. I've had no issues with it.
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Do you have any success with it or just running it
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

I am thinking about putting Backtrack on my Iconia A500. Following up on a previous question by NickkxNekro, would one be able to plug the Alfa wifi device into A500 and make use of it?

im assuming yes since you can use 3g usb dongles

[Q] externally powered wifi adapter via otg for Backtrack

Greetings! I've been lurking on XDA for quite some time, and first I would like to give a big thank you to all the developers. I would never have purchased a Kindle Fire if I didn't have faith in your ability to unlock the hardware's true potential. You guys/gals rock.
Here's my question: I develop and troubleshoot municipal and commercial wired/wireless networks and I would really like to be able to use the KF with backtrack. I understand that OTG support under ICS is very close to being a reality, would it be possible to support an external wifi adapter via OTG?
Drawing power is the first problem that comes to mind, so my thought is to mod a USB OTG adapter to draw from an external DC source instead of the KF.
This could have some awesome potential if it could work. I'm willing to do whatever I can to make this happen, so if one of you veteran developers could set me on the right track to backtrack it would be greatly appreciated.

I'm no wifi/kernel expert but as far as i have understood it:
It should be possible if you get the right wifi modules to work. Android uses a modified wpa_supplicant, so even if you have linux wifi drivers for usb you would need to patch them to get it running. The current kernel does not have mac80211/cfg80211 modules compiled it, but i think that you probably would need them (i think they are in the kernel source, they are just not set yet). The current module for the tiwlan is proprietary and is also uses some strange ibCustomWifi as wrapper around WEXT, not sure if they also did some changes there.
If the 3.0 kernel boots we should anyhow change to a mac80211 wifi driver and also use wpa_supplicant 0.8 instead of 0.6 so your chances should be a lot better with the 3.0 kernel.
So it strongly depends if your external wifi adapter is very well supported for linux (or better for Android ....) und if we get otg running. (There might be some hidden problems to discover).

Sengwall,
There are several threads in the xda forums for similar projects on different devices that might be useful as the steps are basically the same (assuming that somebody gets OTG working). Here's one of them:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1484339

Thanks for the input...ill look and see if there has been success on other devices with the same board.... great suggestion.

[Q] Wifi cracking with Nexus7

Hi guys,
Just installed ubuntu, wireless keyboard and mouse, MHL... OMG this is awesome
sudo apt-get install aircrack-ng, and it even worked.. hehehe...
Ok so now for the sad part.
airmon-ng start wlan0 works ok and creates mon0
but as you can google around, the BCM4330 card does not support wifi injection.
So two chances here:
1) wait for injection drivers
2) plug in a wifi dongle and compile some drivers for it
what steps must I do to be able to compile drivers on this?
emerge kernel headers and make && make install?
I think someone must already have tried this..
(ps: why does lspci show nothing?)
Cheers!
Phk

Even with PCs, air*-ng is not very portable (in the hardware sense) to arbitrary wireless phy chips.
A couple years ago, when buying NICs for PCs for that type of application, you had to be extremely careful about the exact revision (not just the model number!) of PCI cards - manufacturers had the habit of randomly choosing slightly different phy chips with different version releases of the same NIC cards.
I don't know if the issue is hardware or a lack of API support by the proprietary firmware blobs - it could be either. I'm pretty sure that the N7 uses a proprietary (Broadcom?) downloadable firmware blob to fire up the WiFi phy - the driver is not a "pure open source" driver.
good luck.
Phk said:
(ps: why does lspci show nothing?)
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Perhaps because there is no PCI bus?

bftb0 said:
Perhaps because there is no PCI bus?
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Lol, stupid me
About the wifi drivers, has anyone tried to compile external wifi-dongle drivers with success? any caveats?!
Thanks!

DVB-T

Any chance to use an USB DVB-T DONGLE with NEXUS PLAYER?

Maybe. You want "TV" on your Set top box ?
Software is the tricky part. Does this work ? : http://www.geniatech.com/pa/pt115m.asp
I recall a decent thread here on XDA somewhere but can't find it right now and seem to recall the app wasn't going anywhere too fast.
And there's at least one 3 star app on Play, but doesn't work for many people.
I'll be happy just to get FM radio, with SDR Touch or whatever...

thanks, can be a thing like that but I want to use any usb dongle that I want and not a single choose like that.
For example I'v build for my daily use, a mini barebone with a small debian distro with VDR, in this way I can play divx and dvb-t as I want but, if my dongle usb dvb-t for any reason broke........I can buy the first dongle usb that I found on any market online, compile kernel module for that dongle and put in usb port it, it's so simple.......
I love nexus player, 99$ about, remote control, android marke, playing game, youtube, and more infinite possibility, but at TV DVB side I want be free to use any usb dongle DVB for desktop pc as I made today
There's any chance to get, nexus player kernel, enable DVB module for dongle, put inside usb port of nexus player, and watch tv?
At software side, is need an app or Android TV S.O. is capable to manage DVB correctly?
Thanks in advance!

Do you have any other Android devices? If you're already comfortable recompiling a kernel to support your hardware, I'd suggest trying that on a different Android device first. Then you would know if the Android framework could handle such a device.
EDIT: Here's a link to the Android TV developer site about supporting live TV in Android TV. It appears it's designed around that being possible, so if you can add your tuner hardware support to the kernel I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to make it work within Android.

ok tnx