Android Technology home: Homemade USB OTG Data cable

As an Android technology home, USB OTG is what you must understand, so-called USB OTG is you can use the phone or tablet to charge, and the computer to transfer data from the Micro USB interface to connect other USB peripherals, such as gamepad, mouse, keyboard, The USB stick even moves the hard drive (of course you need extra power). and a USB OTG data cable is a must-have tool.

Finished product effect

There is no clear standard for what USB peripherals to be compatible with and whether or not you need to root your Android device, but normally "standard" Android devices cannot mount USB peripherals without root. Only Android devices running ice Cream sandwich or higher can recognize a USB gamepad, mouse, or keyboard. The specific situation can be consulted with you around more senior technical home.

Before we begin it is necessary to explain that DIY is not the best way for us to get a USB OTG data cable, buy a bar from the internet and then wait for the courier door is the most convenient. Of course, for the technology house this approach is simply weak, we have a variety of data lines to provide us with enough materials, waste utilization is environmentally friendly and save money, but also to meet the fun DIY, if you have a soldering iron on hand, then we can start.

Materials and tools

Materials and tools

We need to prepare some materials and tools, but don't worry is common, all the tools you need can be found in a Technical home toolkit:

soldering iron, low wattage can be

Fine Lead-free solder

A sharp knife.

Some electrical tapes and heat shrinkable tubing

A standard micro USB data cable

A type a USB extension cable

Solder jumper

What we need is the Micro USB head part, and the USB extension of the female end, but first we need to solder a jumper at the micro USB interface. Pick up the micro USB cable, cut off the small part of the skin with a knife, until you see the solder joint so far, so we need to cut some more.

Open Micro USB Male

Solder Point One red VCC

Solder point two white data-

Solder Point three green data+

Solder Point Four No ID

Solder Point five black ground

When we cut the interface, we see a thin, colored wire welded to the kohiki foot, which corresponds to the list above. We need to connect the solder joint Four (ID) with the solder Point five (ground) through jumpers . The solder point four is open in the standard USB data cable, while the solder point four in the USB OTG data cable needs to be grounded. You can weld jumpers anywhere in the data line, as long as the solder joint four and solder point five are connected.

Solder jumper

Then the end of the operation of the USB cable is completely reduced, remember to leave a long enough wiring, and prepare two heat shrink tube (if you have), put them on the data line, but do not immediately heat, all the finishing work after the functional test is normal.

Splicing Data Cable

Cut off the male end of the USB extension cord and peel the skin about 5 centimeters to see if the color of the thin wire exposed is the same as the micro USB cable that was previously processed. If the same words just by color matching to join together, if the unfortunate difference, then according to the above list of solder joints cut before cutting the male ratio, if you have a multimeter on hand, you can actually test it.

Splicing Data Cable

Carefully stitch the two data lines together and make sure the heat shrink tube is on the data line before stitching. Because later in the use will often bend drag and so on, so make sure to ensure that the welding is strong enough, even if it takes more time is OK.

Test

When all solder joints are cooled, carefully connect the data cable to the phone or tablet, find an old-fashioned USB wired mouse, connect to the other end of the data line, in a few seconds you should be able to see the mouse pointer on the device, if you use a laser mouse instead of a ball mouse, You should also see the mouse light up when you insert it.

Although in the mobile phone or tablet sisu a mouse is cool but actually not very practical, this is only for testing, if everything is normal, heat shrinkable tube, if there is no heat shrink tube can use electrical tape to the interface part of the data line tightly wrapped. The mouse and all other USB devices use the same four contacts, so if the mouse is working correctly then it means that our data line is successful.

Heating tightening heat shrinkable tubing

Heating tightening heat shrinkable tubing

Actual use

If you are using a Samsung Galaxy S3, you can connect the USB drive directly via the USB OTG data cable, and you will find a new folder in your phone's explorer called USB storage, which can see all the files on the USB drive. If you're using a Nexus 7 or Galaxy Nexus, it's a little bit more complicated.

The native Jelly bean system can identify and mount a USB flash drive, but the system does not automatically install it. This means that the mobile phone and the system support USB stick, but can not be used directly. Android developers say this is purposeful, they will provide all the functionality to do this, but do not provide a user interface, they do not want the phone to automatically read the USB stick. There was a long debate about the subject.

And now all we need to do is root your device, when you root device, download Stickmount and install from Google Play store, then when you connect the USB flash drive, you will be prompted to mount the USB stick, you can see the file inside.

Android Technology home: Homemade USB OTG Data cable