Android Phone Complications with Arxterra Robot Application

/in , , , /by

By Tien Dang

Introduction
ArxRobot is an application for Android phone that allows users to control their robots wirelessly through Internet command (panel website: http://cp.arxterra.com/#). For this project, we will be using this application to control the Hexapod for walking sequence and traveling over objects on the testing field.

Trouble download and connection
In order to download the App from Play Store into the phone, we need an Android phone with version of Android 1.6 or higher. Although, there are other phones that allow you to download the App and use it but there are few of them (?) can’t recognize the USB from your phone and the Microcontroller ‘s USB ( a test had been done using a  Samsung galaxy SII (SGH-R760), Samsung galaxy S4 (SGH-M919) , Samsung galaxy S3 (SGH-T989) and found out that these phones are not recognized by the USB from the ADK board, due to the phones IOIO-OTG were not supported). To check that if the phones are compatible with IOIO-OTG or not, the user can visit at https://github.com/ytai/ioio/wiki/Supported-Devices. There are certain cases that the user phone is compatible with the IOIO-OTG, but is not compatible with the App. (I have tested HTC WildFire S)

 figure 1

Figure 1: Compatibility of HTC Wildfire S from https://github.com/ytai/ioio/wiki/Supported-Devices

figure 2

Figure 2: Compatibility of HTC Wildfire S when downloading the App.

Solution
If your phone is not compatible with the ArxRobot App, we have no choice besides using another phone. Incase if your phone is not compatible with the IOIO-OTG USB. All we need to do is unlocking the bootloader from your phone and install the USB driver into it.

What is a Booloader?

Bootloader is a piece of code that runs before any operating system is running. Bootloader is used to boot other operating system and usually each operating system has a specific set of Bootloader for it. For the new phones such as Samsung Galaxy S.x, bootloader is actually locked. The guide that shows how to unlock Bootloader can be find at http://www.addictivetips.com/mobile/what-is-bootloader-and-how-to-unlock-bootloader-on-android-phones-complete-guide .

Advantages and disadvantages of Bootloader

figure 3

Figure 3: Screen shot while unlocking bootloader

If the user decided to unlock the Bootloader for their phone, the phone will show the picture as Fig.3 demonstrated. The user phone’s warranty will be voided, and could cause some applications on their phone to not work properly. But on the other hand, they will be able to install and custom any drivers for their phone as desired.  For an Android phone version of 4.3.x and up, the developer team has not been able to unlock the bootloader at this point of time yet. So there is no way we can control the Microcontroller board via Internet if we own an Android with version 4.3.x or beyond this version.