Handling USB connections in Android

The conventional way to use an Android tablet or smartphone is as a USB peripheral that connects to a USB host (e.g. PC) and synchronizes its data and media files. However an Android device can also behave as a USB host since the API level 12 (Android 3.1). With this feature, you can for example connect and use a USB mouse, keyboard or memory stick…

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USB powered peripheral devices

This is a high-level technical summary about everything (mostly) related to how the USB bus powers the peripheral devices connected to it. We wrote it at first for internal reference, but then noticed it could be of help to our readers. Enjoy! USB in brief At the time of this writing (september 2015), there are 4 remarkable versions of the USB stan…

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How to disable the Keyboard USB HID emulation on Arduino Leonardo

It always starts with a prototype... Some days ago, while crafting a quick prototype on top of an Arduino Leonardo board, we noticed that the USB HID emulation part of the core (Arduino) libraries was always enabled. In short, the above means that: Whether you need to use the USD HID emulation or not, the related code is always compiled and "active…

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Simulate and debug mouse events in Android without rooting your device

We are working right now at BLECentral on a mobile project that requires user interaction with a mouse. Connecting a mouse to Android is straightforward thanks to the support of USB On The Go. You just need to connect a conventional mouse with a USB OTG cable to the USB port of your Android device and the mouse starts working without installing an…

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