Connecting an Android Phone to an Arduino could not be easier. All you need is an OTG cable. I wrote a previous post here about connecting and controlling an Arduino from your Android device. Previously, I had always connected real Arduinos. This time I tried connecting my DIY Arduino.
- The Dashboard in FTD Mercury Mobile enables you to access real-time information about your FTD Mercury system on your iPhone/iPod Touch or Android phone. Information here corresponds to the FTD Mercury Dashboard. If there are items that need your attention, the appropriate button will be lit (in color), and an indicator will be in the upper right corner of the button indicating how many of those items need your attention.
- Windows RT = desktop class operating system with probably thousands of class drivers inbuilt for all sorts of devices. Phones do not have all of that stuff for obvious reasons. Sure but there were very few usb-serial devices that worked in a winRT (metro) app. The one chipset that did work were the FTDI ones.
- DTECH FTDI USB to TTL Serial 3.3V Adapter Cable 6 Pin 0.1 inch Pitch Female Socket Header UART IC FT232RL Chip Windows 10 8 7 Linux (6ft, Black) 4.7 out of 5 stars 12 $13.98 $ 13.
- FTDI USB to UART COM Port Utility. This utility is for use with FTDI USB to UART devices. The utility provides a terminal emulation function for use on Android devices. The Android system must use Android OS version 3.2 or later and provide a USB host port. Features. The application will open automatically when you plug in supported FTDI device controller like FT232R, FT245R, FT232H.
In this connection diagram, we connect a Tx pin of HC-05 with RxD pin of FTDI cable and Rx pin of HC-05 with TxD pin of FTDI cable. Also, connect GND a pin of FTDI with GND pin of HC-05. FTDI Driver Installation. Now plug USB cable with your laptop or computer. Next step is to install drivers for FTDI chip.
Pictured above is my Samsung S5 (G900H) connected to my DIY Arduino via an FTDI converter and a white OTG cable. The FTDI converter would normally be plugged into your Host PC USB port. With the OTG cable, the Android Phone functions as the host. From the screen shot of the phone, you can tell that the Arduino is loaded with the Minipirate sketch. The phone is running the USB Terminal app. Note: some Android phones do not support USB host mode. To check if yours does, I recommend this app.
When I first connected my Arduino to the Phone it did not recognize the connection. I found out that my FTDI chip had an incorrect product id. The product id was all zeros and needed to be 6001. There is a solution to fix this called ft232r_prog. This Linux command line program allows you to reconfigure (i.e. flash) the FTDI chip. It is a few years old and does not compile on my version of Fedora. (At the time of this post, I am using Fedora 24.) It does however compile fine on an Ubuntu distro. I used YUMI to boot into a live Ubuntu image to compile and run it. Here are the commands to install the prerequisites, compile and change the product ID on an Ubuntu system: