Usb host on dell streak

If the option can be found in 1.6, I may already have the hardware to test it.

This would be a beautiful thing!

I just so happened to have the correct hardware on hand to try this so I gave it a go, looks like it does! I'm actually typing this message with a USB keyboard- I can't get it to mount a USB drive yet, but I intend to brush up on my Linux commands and syntax tomorrow and try again- if I can get it to mount external storage, all of my dreams have officially come true (minus the Froyo, that is).

Edit: I'm on the MoDaCo custom ROM r2, 2.1 build 8105, for those interested.

Sent from my Dell Streak using XDA App

Hey there, real interested in what you did to mod your cable to handle this. Was it a matter of tying the OTG pin to ground?

Did the streak supply power over usb? Many android devices cant, but I believe given the right cable mod the streak can.

I didn't have to do any mods on mine, I have the home dock (which converts the Streak's port to miniUSB) and a dongle that has male miniUSB on one end and female standard USB on the other. Streak on the dock, dongle in the back of the dock, and keyboard into the dongle.

I don't know if it supplied power or not, what would be the best way to check? Multimeter across the power/gnd should give 5V regardless of if it's powered, do I need to check the amperage as well? I was thinking I might just try firing up the ol' G1 and plugging it in, to see if it charges.

Sent from my Dell Streak using XDA App

A good test would be to not have the dock plugged in to any power source. Dock your Streak, then use your adaptor with USB keyboard. Does it work? if so, the power is being supplied by the Streak.

If not, it doesn't prove that there is no way to get powered USB host out of the Streak, it would just show that it may require different connections (a modded cable or dock).

Then yes, it supplies power, my dock was unplugged the whole time. Rejoice! I foresee emulators with a USB gamepad in my near future...

Sent from my Dell Streak using XDA App

That's great to hear! Game controller for EMU's is what I'm looking to do with it as well

Funny though, I tried the same with a gender changer a week or so ago and it didn't work for me. I think the difference must be that the cable you're plugging in to the dock must ground the OTG pin.

Unfortunately that probably means I'd either have to get a dock, or dissect and solder my USB cable to get the same.

Ah, I wondered what that meant. I have the home dock and saw Win7 did something funny... it's all a bit beyond my abilities so I look forward to someone doing interesting things with it

how can we make a usb cable with "usb host" feature ?

keatonreckard said:

EiHter using the media dock with a male mini usb to female usb adapter, or i think using the standard usb cable with a female to female adapter placed on the end should work too.


Sent from my Dell Streak using XDA App

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

Unfortunately I don't think a female to female adaptor alone will do the trick with the Streak USB Cable. I have one here, and it's not working.

I believe the reason is the USB OTG pin needs to be grounded to identify that we are in USB OTG mode (pin 4 as identified here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDMI).

I think the reason it's working with the dock for that person is because the dock exposes that pin at the mini B port and the cable adaptor he's using is an OTG cable that grounds the pin.

I haven't tried modding my cable for this yet, but will soon. My soldering iron is in storage right now unfortunately.

Ok; I understand that we have to connect OTG pin (no 4 on PDMI) to GND (no 2 on PDMI)
Is that correct ?

Is there a way to do it on the other end (not the PDMI side but USB side) ?
Because I don't want to break my only Dell Streak data cable...

Unfortunately, no. only 4 wires run through the cable and are exposed at the other end. You would need a 5th (the USB ID, aka OTG lead).

So I just finished creating my own modded cable and it is working great.
I've attached pictures of the build here. I found that this only works in Android 2.1 (8150 build for me, may work with other 2.1 builds). 1.6 seems like it doesn't have the drivers for this.

DISCLAIMER: If you try to duplicate what I did here, you're taking the risk of damaging your cable beyond repair, and if you do something incorrectly and plug the cable in to your Streak, there is a definite possibility you will damage your streak permanently. So anything you do, do so carefully and at your own risk!

I will say this; this cable is HARD to de-shield! It has metal shield all around the parts we need to get to, and I had to cut with metal clippers and desolder parts of it to get the shielding off. Not pretty, and pretty risky for damaging the cable. I would advise you buy an extra cable before trying this. I didn't have an extra, but I was really risking not being able to charge my device or something if I broke my cable.

After removing the shielding you can see that there is a small PCB with traces marked 1 3 on the left, and then 2 5 on the right. These correspond to the PDMI specification at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDMI .

For my build, I chose to solder a switch to bridge the OTG pin 4 to GND pin 2. This way, my cable can still be used as a normal USB cable as well. In one image I have flipped the opened PDMI connector over and you can see an orange wire I have soldered on to pin4. (One side of the PDMI connector has ODD pins, like 1,3,5,7... the other side has EVEN 2,4,6,8...). Pin 2 is the first pin on the right on the EVEN side, and pin 4 is the second.

As was stated in earlier posts, you can use a female to female gender changer for the other end of the USB cable, rather than soldering on your own connector or something.

Note that having the cable in OTG mode when plugging your streak in to your computer or power adapter over USB could damage something because OTG mode will start outputting power over the same pins that it's usually inputting from!!!

0TheRain0,

This is great !
Thanks for sharing your findings.
I sent you a PM; please check it when you have time...

When I built my Dell Streak Mini USB adapter, I brought out PDMI pin 4 to the OTG pin on the Mini USB.

I tried it with 2 different cheap Mini USB to Standard USB ("A") female adapters, and tried several devices including a Apple Mini Keyboard/Hub, and USB Flash drives.

I also tried the same components on the Dell Home Dock.

They did not work, but I suspect that the Mini USB to Standard USB female adapters do not short the OTG pin to ground.

What we need is some that do. Then it would be plug and play at least for dock owners.

Edit:
These claim to enable USB host mode when Connected to a N800:
http://www.electronicproductonline.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=2043
Therefore Should require no modification to use with the dock, as long as the dock brings out pin 4, which as far as I remember, my testing said it did.

This thread is currently of great interest. Should it, in theory, be possible to hook up my Canon digi SLRs as mass storage devices then?

Sometimes being able to get the image onto a bigger screen has it's benefits. The Streak's screen is actually very well calibrated as well, compared to my hardware calibrated monitor!

In the ideal world i'd be able to tether and shoot using the streak (like I can with my laptop) but I'm realistic and know that's not likely to happen!

What I DON'T get is why Dell have put in USB host functionality without implementing it in the lead?

Well, I was going to hold off on cutting up a cable to try something, but I just had a cable go through the washer and dryer... and it was looking pretty bad and actually cut through the jacket and shielding on the wire... so I cut off the PDMI lead and about 3" of cable (right before the break).

Inside the jacket are 4 wires. Black, White, Green, Red. Obviously they correspond to the USB 2.0 spec... so I guess in some way, VDC, Ground, Data+, Data-... but no OTG wire.

Would anyone that opened up the connector know how these wire colors correspond?

What I really want is for my 80GB iPod to have it's music available to the Streak in my car, so here's what I was planning:

1) Cut up the Dell PDMI cable (done).
2) Cut up an old iPod to Firewire cable I have laying around
3) Splice VDC+ and Ground on the iPod and PDMI to the corresponding VDC+/Ground USB end of the original Dell Cable. This will plug into a 12V->USB Adapter (probably the Dell one) to power and charge both devices.
4) Splice the corresponding PDMI and iPod data transfer wires.
5) Ground OTG on Streak side and add a micro switch, like TheRain did...

I can then wrap this up in some custom cable thing shround thing that I'll figure out.

Little bit of research led me to the micro-AB receptacle that basically determines if a device is acting as a host or slave. So, I would say the preferred way to do this, instead of wiring in a switch, would be to find a receptacle and hack into it... so here's one you can get cheap:

http://www.retractablecables.com/US...ro_AB_Female_Adapter_for_USB_OTG_Devices.html

This should be able to wire up something that basically puts the device into OTG mode when you connect a micro-A cable to the device, and a slave device when you connect a micro-B cable.

So solder/wire that up.. connect the Streak with a micro-A cable to a powered USB hub, connect the peripherals to the hub, and you should be good to go without a micro switch.

On an edit note, I also found a bare micro-AB female that you can buy... but it's more expensive than the previous adapter, so uh I guess it depends on how much time you want to spend tearing the adapter apart.

http://ntcdistributing.com/products/usb-connectors.htm