An Android USB accessory must adhere to Android Accessory Protocol, which defines how an accessory detects and sets up communication with an Android-powered device. In general, an accessory should carry out the following steps:
The following sections explain how to implement these steps.
Your accessory should have logic to continuously check for connected Android-powered devices. When a device is connected, your accessory should determine if the device supports accessory mode.
When an Android-powered device is connected, it can be in one of three states:
During the initial connection, the accessory should check the vendor and product IDs of the connected device‘s USB device descriptor. The vendor ID should match Google’s ID (0x18D1) and the product ID should be 0x2D00 or 0x2D01 if the device is already in accessory mode (case A). If so, the accessory can now establish communication with the device through bulk transfer endpoints with its own communication protocol. There is no need to start the device in accessory mode.
Note: 0x2D00 is reserved for Android-powered devices that support accessory mode. 0x2D01 is reserved for devices that support accessory mode as well as the ADB (Android Debug Bridge) protocol, which exposes a second interface with two bulk endpoints for ADB. You can use these endpoints for debugging the accessory application if you are simulating the accessory on a computer. In general, do not use this interface unless your accessory is implementing a passthrough to ADB on the device.
If the vendor and product ID do not match, there is no way to distinguish between states b and c, so the accessory attempts to start the device in accessory mode to determine if the device is supported.
If the vendor and product IDs do not correspond to an Android-powered device in accessory mode, the accessory cannot discern whether the device supports accessory mode and is not in that state, or if the device does not support accessory mode at all. This is because devices that support accessory mode but aren‘t in it initially report the device’s manufacturer vendor ID and product ID, and not the special Android Open Accessory ones. In either case, the accessory should try to start the device into accessory mode to figure out if the device supports it. The following steps explain how to do this:
After sending the final control request, the connected USB device should re-introduce itself on the bus in accessory mode and the accessory can re-enumerate the connected devices. The algorithm jumps back to determining the device's accessory mode support to check for the vendor and product ID. The vendor ID and product ID of the device will be different if the device successfully switched to accessory mode and will now correspond to Google‘s vendor and product IDs instead of the device manufacturer’s IDs. The accessory can now establish communication with the device.
If at any point these steps fail, the device does not support Android accessory mode and the accessory should wait for the next device to be connected.
If an Android-powered device in accessory mode is detected, the accessory can query the device‘s interface and endpoint descriptors to obtain the bulk endpoints to communicate with the device. An Android-powered device that has a product ID of 0x2D00 has one interface with two bulk endpoints for input and output communication. A device with product ID of 0x2D01 has two interfaces with two bulk endpoints each for input and output communication. The first interface is for standard communication while the second interface is for ADB communication. To communicate on an interface, all you need to do is find the first bulk input and output endpoints, set the device’s configuration to a value of 1 with a SET_CONFIGURATION (0x09) device request, then communicate using the endpoints.