Nexus One gets USB host driver from a dude with an oscilloscope (video)
For Sven Killig, running Android 2.2 wasn't enough. No sir, this dude wanted even more power for his Nexus One, so he went ahead and penned a few lines of code that have allowed his Googlephone to act as a USB host. As a result, he can now do cutting edge stuff like plugging in USB keyboards and webcams, as well as more useful things like watching movies off USB sticks or connecting to a monitor via a DisplayLink USB-to-DVI adapter. All these features are demonstrated in the video after the break, and you'll find the downloadable binaries at the source -- Sven expects them to work on Android 2.1 as well.























Nicely Done, wonder if it can power my usb feet warmer/slippers
@gnawol A more important question is what background is that on the left monitor?
I want it.
@tybert7 It's from http://exoteric.roach.org
@tybert7
you know, as soon as i saw this article thats the first thing that entered my mind!! XD
but yeah, this is pretty amazing... i mean, the amount of things you can do with this is just astonishing :D
@gnawol - Hey, wow that guy has an oscilloscope.
@sonic74 Gallery 33
@gnawol geeks have such gaudy taste...
Impressive!
This really should be standard in modern smartphones.
@Golgo
Like in the Nokia N8
@stevenf17
he said Modern
@tim3k
Yeah modern, not next-gen unreleased phone
@Golgo
So here's the question -- this was Google's baby, their star -- why the FUCK didn't they do this to begin with!? You can't tell me that they don't have the resources and the engineering skills to do what a lone guy in his basement with a scope can? I don't get it...it's like they wanted the N1 to fail...no marketing, crippled features...not taking advantage of the full camera resolution for video...ugh.
@Golgo : Battery life.
@DoctarPeppar
Its not like there are Android devs at Google just sitting around. Besides, its open source. Google could always decide to roll this code into the main Android code branch.
Lets cut the shit, OSS is King. Not fanbois and brands.
@xanavi On a lighter note, guess I can have a geek phone again. Cause this "PDAs going mainstream" kinda made my geek dreams of having the craziest phone die. I need my 7 inch tablet phone with a 64GB stick crammed into the USB port via some bizarre dongle.
Nice!
This is nuts, if the phone has enough power to run a USB keyboard that would be awesome.
Watching clips from your USB stick...
I really do like this idea. Even the more capacious 16 and 32 GB drive come in thumbnail sizes, so it's not like it has to stick out in an obnoxious way from the phone. If this doesn't nuke the Nexus One's battery, I could see this guy taking the concept to interesting places.
@Dante of the Inferno
Batteries already not great... but i can see myself carrying another little box with a usb port and a built in battery... could even function as a backup for the phones battery.
@Dante of the Inferno
Ditto... I love the idea. This being a prime example of why exactly Google is great. Try that on iPhone or Nokia, see how you do.
@martix Nokia N8 does this out of the box. And more.
@kingstu
Are there memory sticks with micro USB or do you always need an adapter?
@martix The N900 was also hacked to have USB host.
@SeeKo
There are these:http://news.tigerdirect.com/2008/07/09/sandisk-8gb-microsdhc-with-usb-reader-and-sd-adapter/
I've even seen ones smaller than that...
@martix
As already mentioned, the N8 does this, but so do many other Nokia models going back years. Nokia as always, so far ahead of the game that the haters just can't comprehend their brilliance.
You know, that and DAP's have had USB host capabilities for darn near a decade now.
@KC
Windows Mobile was also capable of this. My now ancient Toshiba E335 had USB host!
@Peter F
I know, but I did not mention it because the person I was replying to specifically mentioned Nokia and on poster mentioned the N8 in reply but it's far from the only Nokia that can do it. Nokia has been making mobile computers since two years before Google was founded. Haters had better recognize.
That and I don't know if Windows Phone 7 can do it or not out of the box. So Windows phones may lose that capability because Windows Phone 7 seems to have a few carrier requested drawbacks backed right in. We will see soon enough I suppose.
@kingstu But unfortunately it is still a Nokia.
@bachviet
N900 does not have USB host. It is unavailable at the hardware level.
N900 needs this as well!
@dtakias as far as I knew it already has it if the N810 was anything to go by
@dtakias N900 had this for ages now.
@Vizzy
Actually I remember reading about it but all the information I found was that it can't act as a USB host. You have any link/guide for it?
@dtakias
It's "coming soon"
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=52227
@dtakias I found this: http://www.mobile4arab.com/vb/showthread.php?t=735029
ze ju-es-bii-suppoat
As you can see it requires a powered hub. I can't seem to find the video which for once I'm interested in seeing. Also, it appears this will in it's current condition it appears it will break client mode, so no adb or tethering. Since he's using debian loop 2.1/2.2/Froyo is irrelevant, no reason support for some of these devices couldn't be added with appropriate patch to Android itself, such as vold support for USB storage device. Keyboard certainly, no cursor for mouse in ARM builds though. The most interesting thing is whether displaylink's framebuffer could be linked with the GPU/MDP framebuffer in EBI so that 3D and Flash could be supported on external monitor, and hardware codecs through the QDSPv6 and OpenCore. Sven, if you read please join #android on freenode or #htc-linux, would love to discuss.
@tmzt I think http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/libdlo would be a good place for this.
@tmzt adb and tethering work over WLAN, too.
iPhone :0
Nexus One :1
Not sure about carrying the hub in my pocket but otherwise this is a big win.
@TOPSPEED Well, I wouldn't go that far. I'd see the push notifications on 2.2 as something more admirable myself.
@TOPSPEED
How is that a big win for the Nexus 1? Many DAP's have had USB hosting for close to a decade and Nokia's been doing it for years on their phones. Just cause you don't think it's pretty, don't think for one second that Symbian and Maemo (and now Meego - the true king of mobile Linux) are not the most full featured mobile OS' on the planet.
Finally someone really uses his smartphone. Nice.
Nice. USB power loopback cable; power out from N1 connects to power in to N1 = PUPPY
Perpetual-USB-Powered-Phone-Yeah!
Pretty awesome. I do miss it when my JB iPhone 3GS can't do this kind of stuff..
If he could integrate the USB hub and the DisplayLink adapter into a tiny box, this would make the best dock ever. Getting full desktop experience with keyboard, mouse and monitor, while your phone charges is pure win.
Steve Jobs will probably add support for this stuff in iPhone 7.0. And he'll say he did it best.
windows and an oscilloscope... ?
never thought I'd saw these 2 words in the same sentence.
@nottekangaru Techtronix makes an o'scope that runs on Windows XP (they might even have one that runs Vista or 7, but I've never seen one).