USB On-The-Go

I recently acquired an USB OTG adapter for my Android devices. I wanted to see what kind of peripherals I could connect and if they would function correctly.

The first peripheral I tried was a standard HP USB Keyboard, nothing fancy. This worked on both my Galaxy Tab A 10.1 (2016) device and on my Galaxy S5 phone. I also tried a no-name wireless keyboard with a small USB dongle, this also worked fantastic. The latter has built in mouse which was also recognized by both my devices.

Next I tried a XBOX 360 Wireless controller with USB dongle. No dice on my Tab A but working fine on my Galaxy S5. My Galaxy S5 has been flashed to cyanogenmod 14 with a 3.4 kernel while the Tab A is still running an unrooted stock 6.1 with a 3.1 kernel. My guess is that the Tab A’s 3.1 kernel has not been compiled with the xpad driver needed to run the XBOX 360 wireless controller, since it seems that the dongle gets power just fine by the micro USB port.

A quick google search has confirmed this. Apparently very few Samsung devices running android 5+ support the xpad driver out of the box.

Next step in this endeavor is to root the Galaxy Tab A and get the xpad driver loaded.