Bad OTG cable or missing a setting?

[nsafreak]

Well I'm not sure whether I have a setting that I missed on my phone & tablet or if there's something else going on here. I have a pretty generic USB OTG cable this one specifically that I previously used for my S3 & Nexus 7 (2012 edition). I'm trying to use it now with my Droid Turbo & LG Gpad 10.2 and neither one of them recognize any of the devices that I plug into the cable. These are devices that worked fine previously on my S3 such as various USB thumb drives and this portable USB DAC/amp. I figured that since it had no issues working on my Nexus 7 that it shouldn't have problems with other devices.

That doesn't seem to be the case or I'm missing a setting somewhere. USB drives that have an LED on them light up for a second when I plug them in to the OTG cable but otherwise don't register. The DAC would previously show that USB audio was detected and as far as I was aware this was something that was built into kitkat 4.4. Any ideas as to what's wrong or do I just need to get a different OTG cable?

 

[lopri]

I think getting a couple of new cables is the easiest way to determine what's at fault. OEMs generally do support USB OTG and even Kitkat Nexus devices, as long as hardware is capable, should do USB OTG with a hack like StickMount.

There are apps that diagnose phone/tablet's USB functionality.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.chainfire.usbhostdiagnostics
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.tauruslabs.usbhostcheck

They tell you what your device's USB controller is capable of. That will help rule out device defects.

 

[frostedflakes]

What file system are the flash drives using? I was playing around with it a bit on my Droid Turbo and OTG only seemed to support USB flash drives formatted in FAT32. Not surprisingly NTFS was a no-go, but unfortunately no exFAT support either it didn't seem. Which means you'd be limited to the max volume size of 32GB and the max file size of 4GB with FAT32, which could be a pretty major limitation depending on how large of a flash drive you wanted to connect to it and what kind of files you wanted to put on it.

EDIT: May explain the USB drives not working, unsure about the DAC though. As suggested could maybe have another problem.

 

[nsafreak]

I think getting a couple of new cables is the easiest way to determine what's at fault. OEMs generally do support USB OTG and even Kitkat Nexus devices, as long as hardware is capable, should do USB OTG with a hack like StickMount.

There are apps that diagnose phone/tablet's USB functionality.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.chainfire.usbhostdiagnostics
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.tauruslabs.usbhostcheck

They tell you what your device's USB controller is capable of. That will help rule out device defects.

Unless I'm misreading the results of these two programs they seem to be reporting that USB host is not enabled. When I run USB Host Check it returns:

android.hardware.usb.host.xml - Ok
handheld_core_hardware.xml - USB host not enabled
tablet_core_hardware.xml - Not found

When I run USB Host Diagnostics it returns:

Android API

Claims support - Yes
Classes found - Yes
Device Detected - No

Kernel

Claims support - Yes
Device Detected - No

Verdict

OS Support - Yes
3rd party apps - No

It seems there's conflicting information but I may be misinterpreting results.

 

[lopri]

I will try running the diagnosis on my devices to see what they have to say. In the meantime, did you try what frostedflakes suggested? Apparently Droid Turbo does not like exFat format. Format the external drive to FAT32, and see if the problem disappears. It may not be what you wanted but at least you can save time if that turns out to be the case.

 

[nsafreak]

It looks like it was the cable. Just picked up a $3 OTG cable from my local Microcenter and it works fine with my thumb drives & DAC. Odd that it worked with my S3 & Nexus 7 but has problems with other devices. Oh well, I'm fine with a $3 fix.

 

[lopri]

Glad to hear it worked out without a surprise.