The latest I got from the developer of PPP Widget is this
You can create a simple dialling script though, using “chat” and “pppd” which should be on board of every Android device. There is plenty of information available about this
I have it at a stage where I have the Prolific terminal emulator program, and the PL2303HX cable going to a Hayes compatible modem (US Robotics Sportster Flash actually) and I can send it ATDTxxxxxxxCRLF and it dials out the phone number and makes the other phone ring, and obviously gets nowhere because there is no ISP there.
The RS232 emulation is completely wrong in the way it screws around with the RS232 hardware handshake signals. RTS has to be HIGH all the time otherwise the modem ignores the data. DTR has to be HIGH all the time otherwise the modem stays on-hook (I am aware this can be programmed on some models). So I had to wire up these signals externally, and the tablet does just RX and TX. It’s OK. Whoever wrote the terminal emulator didn’t know any of this.
For the Thuraya phone I will have to dig into chat and pppd… does anybody know this? I believe they are command line tools, so would need some kind of batch file.
I have made progress.
There appears to be no way to get a ttyUSB device file under /dev, using anything from FTDI. I have spoken to them, because we buy thousands of their chips for our USB-RS422/485 converters and getting this to work would be good because we could advertise Android capability, which nobody else has. They say it cannot be done without recompiling the kernel and they have a long appnote on how to do this.
However Prolific’s PL2303HX (emphasise the HX; the old PL2303 used in 99% of cheap USB-RS232 cables is not HX) does do that, via a normal OTG cable. I now see ttyUSB0 under /dev, using the root file browser.
I configured PPP Widget for ttyUSB0 but it doesn’t find the modem. Post-reboot, it sits there indefinitely, saying “checking access” with both buttons greyed out. I am trying to find out what it is doing…
If I connect a scope to the RS232 connector, and start up the Prolific dumb terminal app, I can see characters coming out, and if I loopback pins 2 and 3, I see the reception of the transmitted data (9600,8,n,1, handshake off). So this is MAJOR PROGRESS! A functioning VCP under Samsung Android… so much for needing to recompile the kernel!
Now I need to find out what the hell PPP Widget is trying to do… but it doesn’t sound like it’s too far away.
If you down the road of rooting etc. then you best start with CyanogenMod. That’s the distro for these things, gives a lot more options in a well organized way with package manager, etc. Otherwise you will keep on running into issues due to the changes Samsung made.
The main difficulty with Android is that hardware manufacturers modify it and them being hardware manufacturers, they don’t have the slightest clue about software development. Personally, I solved this by buying the Google branded Nexus devices but as of the latest generation, they are not that attractive anymore from a price/performance ratio. My next one is going to be something else with CyanogenMod.
Won’t that wipe out all my app config?
Yes, loading a new ROM is similar to installing a fresh copy of Windows on a desktop pc. You’ll have to install any apps again from scratch. But the stock ROM won’t have any of the limitations that Samsung may have added for whatever reason.
Luckily there is yet another app that checks whether USB host mode is supported on a device.
Won’t that wipe out all my app config?
I am actually not sure if this tablet supports USB Host Mode at all. It detects the OTG cable so it looks like it should. There is a Host Mode bridge cable which I have and which works with an FTDI terminal app, but it doesn’t create a ttyUSB file so apparently there is no VCP functionality, and the terminal app uses some other API.
So this may not solve anything.
Look into http://www.cyanogenmod.org/ that’s the premier non device supplier Android distro which does everything they never wanted you to be able to do.
There is a whole pile of features which Samsung removed from standard Android 4.4.2…
Another avenue worth exploring would be to replace the Samsung ROM with a stock Android one. You’ve rooted the tablet anyway so there is no reason to accept any limitations introduced by Samsung. My Moto G smartphone has an almost standard Android version and it’s a joy to use. Much better than any ‘manufacturer enhanced’ versions I have ever seen.
That will get me two things:
This is one
and I still won’t have satellite data unless I spend yet more money on one of two other products – and ADL120 or the Thuraya Satsleeve.
It also won’t get me a device on which I can run maps of my own, or obtained from “nonstandard” sources. I don’t think there is a moving map app for IOS which is any good. There are several Oziexplorer-like apps but they are all crippled when it comes to projection options.
I do capitulate but usually not immediately. Unfortunately it’s a fact of life in today’s “instant satisfaction” scene that as soon as you get off the beaten track you are quickly into unexplored territory. I do have a solution (the Lenovo tablet) so I have time to play with…
You could always capitulate and have an ipad with Skydemon, Jeppeson, and Memory Map on it, and get a GTN750 and link the ipad to that. If you put a cost to your time I would be much cheaper.
PPP Widget doesn’t work on this device. The developer replies via a forum where I started a thread but it’s a long process, extracting info one little bit at a time. I can’t understand why people cannot just reply to a straight question.
I wonder if Samsung have crippled the Galaxy to not work as a USB host (i.e. with a USB OTG cable). OTOH, it does seem to detect the cable being plugged in, and since an OTG cable is the only cable whose mere presence can be detected (because it has pins 4+5 shorted), it looks like it does have support for Host mode.
I’ve also been talking to FTDI (Prolific – China – offer no support) and pointed out that their terminal app which is on their website as .apk is evidently much more recent than the one in the app shop. Also the one in the app shop loads as soon as the FTDI cable is inserted, which obviously prevents any other serial app using the virtual COM port The terminal app on their website however does not thus auto-load… It’s a real mess, with lots of developers having written something for v2 or v3 and then it stops working on v4 and they never notice but keep selling the app via the shop. No wonder many of the shop apps show 500,000 downloads. 490,000 of them were uninstalled minutes later.
