USB Host on Android for Beagle Board?

[aaronsher]

My company is considering using the Beagle Board for an Android
project. It looks like you've got USB host support working - can you
confirm whether that's true? If so, how is it exposed to Android
applications?

Thanks,
Aaron

[shivdas.gujare]

On Tue, 9 Feb 2010 11:02:06 -0800 (PST), aaronsher <as...@vanteon.com>
wrote:

> My company is considering using the Beagle Board for an Android
> project. It looks like you've got USB host support working - can you
> confirm whether that's true? If so, how is it exposed to Android

yes, that's true. BB has support for USB host.
can you please explain what do you mean by "how is it exposed to Android
application"?
what are you trying to do?

Thanks and Regards,
Shivdas Gujare

> applications?
>
> Thanks,
> Aaron

[aaronsher]

Sorry, that was unclear. I guess these are really the questions:
- What USB class drivers are available, and what does the system do
with an unknown device class?
- Is there application-level access to the USB pipes?
- Do applications have permissions to access device handles created
by USB class drivers? For example, if I had a USB-to-serial adapter,
and assuming that a class driver exists for something like that, the
driver would presumably create a device handle to represent the serial
pipe. Would my Android application be permitted to read and write this
handle?

Thanks,
Aaron

On Feb 10, 12:38 am, "shivdas.gujare" <shivdas.guj...@embinux.com>
wrote:

[shivdas.gujare]

On Wed, 10 Feb 2010 12:21:04 -0800 (PST), aaronsher <as...@vanteon.com>
wrote:

> Sorry, that was unclear. I guess these are really the questions:
> - What USB class drivers are available, and what does the system do
> with an unknown device class?

refer to http://www.linux-usb.org/devices.html this may not be updated.
kernel source is the best option to look for.
For unknown devices, you have to write either a kernel driver or can write
user space driver(may be using libusb). I am not sure if someone have
ported
libusb for android.

> - Is there application-level access to the USB pipes?

yes, for device side gadgetfs, for host side libusb, also some IOCTL's,
not sure what you are looking for.

> - Do applications have permissions to access device handles created
> by USB class drivers? For example, if I had a USB-to-serial adapter,
> and assuming that a class driver exists for something like that, the
> driver would presumably create a device handle to represent the serial
> pipe. Would my Android application be permitted to read and write this
> handle?

yes, this is possible. if your USB-to-serial adapter creates /dev/ttyUSB0
you can read/write from application. I think, this is what you are looking
for.