Database Users

[Q] Does the Nexus 7 have USB host mode?

Hi,
I was hoping I could post on the developer sub forum, but I have too little post, so I hope some of the devs can help me out.
I have in my possession a USB OTG cable, and I am able to connect it to a usb -> serial port, and send/receive data to and from a PC's hyperterminal. I am also able to send/receive data to and from one of my custom boards (something like arduino) that has a serial interface.
I've written my own program to perform this communication, but it is largely based on
- Slick USB 2 Serial
- USB Serial Monitor Lite
from the playstore.
Now, I am able to perform the above with my Samsung Galaxy S3, however, when I tried running my program, or anyone of the above programs (from the playstore) on one of the china branded tablets, which claimed to have USB host mode, it didn't work.
The tablet that I bought is ICOU7.
Now, I am desperately trying to get my program to run on a tablet, but I do not want to buy a tablet, and waste my money (which I already have with that china tablet) if it doesn't work, so can any of the devs out there, with a Nexus 7, confirm that the Nexus 7 is able to perform serial communication with PC/board through an OTG cable?
Do I need a specific OTG cable to do so?

I can't say for certain that it supports serial connections but it does have host mode. I've used keyboards/mice & flash drives without problem
Sent from my HTC One X using xda app-developers app

Depends on what you mean by "serial" device. If you mean CDC/ACM class usb device, then yes, nexus 7 can handle those, it creates /dev/ttyACMX like on desktop linux. This is only accessible if you have root, though. But, ACM devices are also supported by android USB Host API, which means you can write android app, which communicates with such device, and it does not require root.

Tasssadar said:
Depends on what you mean by "serial" device. If you mean CDC/ACM class usb device, then yes, nexus 7 can handle those, it creates /dev/ttyACMX like on desktop linux. This is only accessible if you have root, though. But, ACM devices are also supported by android USB Host API, which means you can write android app, which communicates with such device, and it does not require root.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How about for starters, I just wanna communicate with a PC's hyper terminal through its comport? Will Nexus 7 be able to do that?

bagofcrap24 said:
I can't say for certain that it supports serial connections but it does have host mode. I've used keyboards/mice & flash drives without problem
Sent from my HTC One X using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The china tablet I had was able to support mouse/keyboard too. But it was unable to establish a link to my PC's hyper terminal, which I was able to do with my unrooted Samsung S3

[Q] Nexus 10 as a laptop

Hello. I was looking to replace my laptop these days and since i own a desktop pc,i was thinking maybe a tablet would be a solid solution for something more mobile. I own an android smartphone,but i don't know tablets and their limitations. So,to be more specific:
1) Is it possible to read/write data to external devices,like hdd or usb? And if so, does it need root or is it stock enabled?
2)Is it possible to mirror screen to a monitor? I'm reading strange answers about miracast and i am not completely sure if its micro hdmi out enables mirror screening or just movie streaming.
3)You think it is possible to do some programming on it? Obviously i am not talking about serious and heavy stuff, but since it comes with the best processor out on tablets-yet- and 2gb ram and there are many IDE's on play store i'm guessing it should be ok? Also,would it be a near laptop experience if i installed the linux app?
Hope i did't tire you,thanks for reading.

1)https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.homeysoft.nexususb.importer&hl=en <- non root.
2)HDMI out does complete mirroring iir
3)well, you could boot ubuntu if you HAD to. but i don't see why not.

I don't think Android in general is well suited for a laptop replacement. I need things like the ability to view more than one window at a time, particularly when programming.
That said, one of the first things I want to do is work on being able to dual boot Linux and Android. For most entertainment type things Android is best but for productivity I'd prefer to boot Linux.

Same here. I mainly got the Nexus 10 as a laptop/desktop alternative to connect to external LCD monitor, keyboard, mouse and possibly USB storage. It obviously seems powerful enough.
Questions:
Since the built-in display resolution is 2560x1600 and the HDMI output is 1920x1080 does it scale down the built-in display when mirroring?
In mirroring mode can you use the tablet as a touch input (laying it flat next to the keyboard) in place of mouse?
Thanks.

Thank you all for the fast answers.
1)From what i saw,usb importer is for reading only,not writing. So i'm guessing root is needed?
2)Thanks,i didn't know it mirrored to screen.
3)You are right about that part,programming needs many windows. Im guessing apps that offer ide's with multi tabs and possibly extending the display through the hdmi out to two monitors instead of mirror could be possible,right? How does the tablet do with compiling/running speed?
Obviously you are right though, dual boot would be the best option.
Thanks again.

If you are looking for the desktop experience, laptop is still your best choice, there's plenty of processing power, program compatibility, storage and screen space at ~$500. Tablets are mobile devices with limited HW and OS, but in return significantly faster internet, social media and multimedia access, better screen, longer battery life and much comfortable weight allowing the kind of easy use (e-reading in bed etc.) a laptop cannot. The closest tablets to a real laptop are the full Windows8 ones starting around $1000. If I wanted the programs and stuff I'd go with a $500 laptop, if I wanted the larger mobile, multimedia and reading experience, which I do, I'd get the Nexus 10.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Nexus7
That'll most likely happen on the Nexus 10 as well at some point

USB OTG Compatible ATSC Tuner/RCA Video Capture

I'm planning to install my Nexus 7 into the car as soon as I get the car back next month. I'm in the infant stages of planning out the whol system right now
Anyway, are there any compatible ATSC tuners for android? Would be cool to have access to live TV on the go. I've found about a million and a half DVB-T tuners, but haven't had much luck with ATSC.. damn north american standards!
Also, I have a backup camera installed right now (RCA video output). Are there any USB capture cards that work with Android? I will be getting a Joycon EX-R steering wheel interface for volume control and whatnot and it just so happens to come with 3 additional input channels. I figured I'd use one to sense when the reverse light is on to send a particular keystroke and use tasker to trigger the video capture program.

common guys i want to use my droid 4 as a screen for my gamecube and even output it over hdmi.
essentially i want to be able to use my droid 4 as a A/V to HDMI bridge. plenty of products exist on the market as do USB hubs so i think it is only a question of software. does android not yet have official support for this feature? that would be concerning if google were not to undertake improvements in this area. the more accessories that are compatible with android from a legacy perspective enables android to become the dominant computing platform for all tasks, not just mobile stuff. microsoft windows has its days numbered, it will only survive if it embraces multiseat gaming on its free operating system. that is to say every computer running windows is many computers. my droid 4 is a nintendo
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/USB-..._ab_test=201556_3,201527_1_71_72_73_74_75,0_0
something like this

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

Mirror/cast content from Nvidia Shield TV to Nexus 6p

Hi. This is one of those things that must be so simple, but a Google search just comes up with pages and pages of totally unrelated nonsense. Hoping you guys can help me.
All I want to do is be able to mirror my Nvidia Shield TV to my smartphone screen. Not the phone to the NVidia Shield. Like a PS Remote Play but for the NvS TV. My room is within remote and gamepad range so an on screen pad is not necessary. Any help greatly appreciated.
Thanks
(P.S if anyone knows of any Kodi addons with 4k content...that would be awesome! - there were 2 but they have been discontinued)

Any luck or good leads?
"Allcast reciever"?
What app or apps are you suppose trying to get to your phone?
I've been looking into doing the same thing but to a note 4. I think I found a few ways that seems like they would work for media streaming if your Shield had root access or unrestricted app installation options. Things like allcast reciever and other casting options. They all seemed to have too much latency for gaming if that is what you were wanting to do.
I'm not sure if a chromecast can output audio and video using the HDMI port but that might work if it can do that?
The other issue with pulling this off os that I think the solution needs to be some sort of universal screen and audio mirroring, like googlecast, that doesn't care about what app it is mirroring. Otherwise you'll have to rely on the app that is on the shield being capable of casting, and the Nvidia Hub isn't as far as I know.
I search for terms like: Android to android screen mirroring, android remote display, android remote access, etc....nothing so far.
My most promising hope for doing something like this now are:
1. Making my phone somehow act as or emulate a display, TV, Monitor in a way that can utilize the output from the HDMI port of a SHIELD device. This would bypass all the various issues and complications with specific application capabilities and restrictions, though it is just a idea about how to work around the app issues, I have no idea if this would even be possible. I also don't know if anything that is coming out the HDMI port has any sort of HDCP protection. I would assume that some things would but I would also assume that most of those specific things are the kinds of things. I would just be casting via media players anyway.
2. I have a really REALLY fast LAN network, and I know I am able to remotely access my PC in various ways that are low latency and high performance as far as display and audio are concerned. So, assuming the latency could be kept low enough I have thought about working on getting what I want to access on an Nvidia shield device to my PC running Windows 10, then I can just access that from my phone.
I don't know if you're familiar with that saying about engineering which basically says: "It's not a question of what you want to do but how much you can pay to do it." I say that because there seem to be a couple of fairly good high end Headset based displays out there. One is called the "gylph" or something like that and I have looked fairly thoroughly into one or two others that seemed to be high quality and have reliable reviews and testing available to find online. Some didn't seem available for another year or two, and even then you are going to be dropping $500 to $1,000 for them.
3. Using something like Tridef 3d and a head mounted VR headset based display. I was able to get that working pretty well without too much effort from my PC. The Tri-def software creates a side by side view of the application that you tell it to from your PC. So I can basically get a display output from just about anything on my PC and use it with just about anything they can recieve display output from my PC or remotely view my computers display with low latency. I haven't looked too much to see if something similar to this software is available that can run on a shield device. I would assume they are powerful enough even if you had to scale things down just a little bit.
The kind of set up that could send from your SHIELD, to your PC, to your Head Mounted Display or VR headset could be have some interesting advantages if the overall network latency was low enough. Having the rendering of the initial source on one device and the side by side display conversion on another could have a lot advantages. I own a Samsung gear VR innovator edition headset that I can use with my note 4, but if I want to use it for more than 20 minutes I need to pre-cool my phone in the freezer and to get any significant amount of time I think I would need to develop fairly high performance cooling system. That obviously isn't very easy to do when you need it to interface with a phone you use daily and also be small and light enough to attach to something you're wearing on your face. The point is that doing anything more than receiving and audio and video stream on your phone is going to be very resource intensive for it to handle. Even maxing out the gigabit Wi-Fi on my land for my phone makes it really warm and consumes the battery at a very high rate.
Whatever you do if it is helpful I have connected a pluggable USB 2.0 to Gigabit LAN adapter to the shield portable and it more than doubled the network performance. I'm not sure what the actual LAN performance is on the SHIELD
TV but even if you didn't need to increase it you might be able to reduce latency by by separating the total network load between the internal Gigabit Ethernet port and a separate USB 2.0 or 3.0 lan adapter. I don't know enough about androids capabilities to use more than one network adapter simultaneously four separate purposes to know if that is possible.
Well, congratulations if you've made it this far into my post. I have obviously been exploring this kind of thing for a while but there is a lot potential out there and a lot things that I don't know about or understand thoroughly enough. It's nice to know I'm not completely alone in this specific ambition. Hopefully we can gather a few more people and make some progress with this thread!

...wow
Wow that is an indepth reply. Thanks!
I can tell you've put a lot of thought into this. You obviously have a better chance of pulling it off than I do! (I did read it all lol)
I'm basically wanting to be able to mirror the screen like the PS4 remote play. Not just specific apps.
The only reason I know it's possible is that the Playstation 4 handles it remarkably well. No noticable lag as long as you have a good wifi router. Those guys at Sony must be using some kind of black magic. Unfortunately, I'm not gonna be the one who figures this out. I'm in no way a software or network engineer....I am an electrical engineering student though.
Anyway it's also good for me to hear that I'm not alone here. I wouldn't be surprised if Nvidia were working on this right now or at some point in the near future. And I sold the 6P and bought a Note 5 by the way. Wasn't a fan of the 6P at all.

Anyone get this to work or find another solution?
Thanks