How to use VOXL as USB Host

Table of contents

1. Overview
   1. Background
   2. Procedure

Overview

Using VOXL or VOXL Flight’s USB 3.0 OTG Port (J8), the system can be used as a USB3.0 Host provided you use a non-standard USB3.0 cable. It can be used as a USB2.0 host with a standard micro-USB2.0 cable. One or more additional USB2.0 host ports are available on VOXL Add-ons (USB Expander and Debug, LTE v2, Microhard v2)

Background

Because the USB3.0 SS pins on the VOXL cannot support TX/RX swapping, they were set to peripheral mode since the Snapdragon 821 is used mainly in phones and peripheral mode is way more commonly used in a phone configuration.

In order for systems to use the standard micro-b to type A female OTG cables, they need to do TX/RX swapping.

Since VOXL can’t do this, it needs to use a non-standard pinout as it’s default configuration is peripheral mode.

The pinout can be found here: USB3.0 Female A Plug to Micro-B

Procedure

1. Plug in your USB device via a compatible USB3.0 Female A Plug to Mirco-B cable - in our case, we have a USB3.0 Female A Plug to Micro-B plug in the VOXL’s J8 port.

Note: Some customers report success using USB3 with a USB3 OTG adapter like this.

1. Run lsusb -v
   • Check bcdUSB field for USB Version

Here’s an example of a USB3 device:

Bus 004 Device 003: ID 0781:5581 SanDisk Corp. Ultra
Device Descriptor:
  bLength                18
  bDescriptorType         1
  bcdUSB               3.20
  bDeviceClass            0 
  bDeviceSubClass         0 
  bDeviceProtocol         0 
  bMaxPacketSize0         9
  idVendor           0x0781 SanDisk Corp.
  idProduct          0x5581 Ultra
  bcdDevice            1.00
  iManufacturer           1  USB
  iProduct                2  SanDisk 3.2Gen1

Here’s an example of a USB2 device:

Bus 003 Device 003: ID 045e:00f8 Microsoft Corp. LifeCam NX-6000
Device Descriptor:
  bLength                18
  bDescriptorType         1
  bcdUSB               2.00
  bDeviceClass          239 Miscellaneous Device
  bDeviceSubClass         2 
  bDeviceProtocol         1 Interface Association
  bMaxPacketSize0        64
  idVendor           0x045e Microsoft Corp.
  idProduct          0x00f8 LifeCam NX-6000
  bcdDevice            1.00
  iManufacturer           1 Microsoft
  iProduct                2 Microsoft? LifeCam NX-6000
  iSerial                 0 
  bNumConfigurations      1

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