CueCat connected to Android phone
Today, I’d like to show how to exchange data between USB device and ADK-capable Android phone. I will be using CueCat barcode scanner as source device; the data will be received by the phone and displayed on a screen using Arduino Terminal Android application.
A phone is USB device, too, and since two USB devices are unable to communicate to each other directly, I’m using Arduino board equipped with USB Host shield to relay data between devices. The sketch which runs on Arduino is a mix of two other pieces of code, one from ADK terminal emulator article and another one from an article explaining interfacing with a barcode scanner. Refer to these articles if you have questions about a specific piece.
Below is a full text of an Arduino sketch. It can be pasted from this page in Arduino IDE, compiled, and loaded into the board. It is also included in the examples section of USB Host library rev.2.0 distribution on gitHub. The library itself shall be installed in Arduino IDE tree as well.
To receive data from Arduino you’ll need Arduino Terminal application installed on your phone. The source code of application is also available – it is released under GPL2, if you make modifications to the code, please make them available for other people!
Finally, we will need some hardware – an Arduino board, USB Host shield, a USB hub, “declawed” CueCat or any other HID boot barcode scanner, as well as ADK-compatible Android phone. We will also need a 5V power supply capable of providing ~700ma of electrical current. I will show arrangement of all necessary pieces after explaining the sketch code.