linecode / androidusbtest

Access external devices from Android apps directly in C.

Using USB devices in apps on Android in C

This toolset uses rawdrawandroid: https://github.com/cnlohr/rawdrawandroid if you are curious how to develop C applications on Android, check that out.

This toolset operates as a copy-pastable demo of how to do USB in C apps on Android. This is not intended as catch-all or clean demo, but rather a minimal demonstration of getting permissions, and opening up USB devices in C on Android.

You can check out the hardware used for this here: https://github.com/cnlohr/tensigral_lamp

Cutting to the chase

There are three fundamental parts to using USB working on Android in C. Three out of the four of these are completely covered in the void RequestPermissionOrGetConnectionFD() function in test.c. You will need to do all of this in the JNI.

1. You must iterate through the device list from UsbManager, with .getDeviceList() and find your device.
2. You must request permission from Android to use the device with .requestPermission(); caveat: You can just try connecting, if you don't have permission it won't let you connect.
3. You must claim the interface to the device with .claimInterface().
4. You can then use bulk endpoint functions from Android, OR, even better! You can use .getFileDescriptor() and then perform ioctl operations on the file descriptor, sending and receiving data. Interrupt and bulk data is normal. It says you can even make control messages, though I haven't tried.