How to Make USB OTG Cable

by Jakes workshop in Circuits > Electronics

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How to Make USB OTG Cable

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How to make USB OTG "On-The-Go" cable

Did you forgot to put an important file on your USB key or you want to type faster on your smart phone? If your one of those watch this tutorial where I build nice and compact USB OTG 'On-The-Go' cable from an old Usb connectors.

Video:

What You Will Need

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-First thing you are going to need is a female standard USB connector and male USB micro B connector which you can get very cheap in your local electronic store.

-You will also need very thin isolated copper wire.

-Take your scissors and cut 4 pieces of wire the same length. I make them 10 cm long but it is your choice if you want to make them long or short.

-Also cut one very short piece which will enable our cable to act as in OTG mode

Wires and Soldering

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- Peal the ends of your wires and put a small amount of solder on so you can solder them on connector more easily

- Here is a simple schematic of a USB cable which shows you the correct order of the pins and the default color of each pin.

- Standard USB connector has 4 pins. Red and black are input voltage and ground, green and brown are data + and data -.

- I didn’t have the green one at home so I use yellow one instead.

- After you finish with soldering put a few heating tubes around the connections and make sure they fit tightly around the cable.

- Now solder the other ends of the wire on the micro USB connector. I made another schematic how you should wire things up so the USB will work as a host or OTG mode.

- A lot of people wonder why have micro USB 5 pins instead of 4. Actually the extra pin or pin 4 is typically not connected in the normal USB cable but If it is connected to ground pin the phone will turn in a host mode and will be able to read USB keys, webcams, mice and keyboards.

- Don’t forget to put the heatring tubes before you solder things up and our cable is basically finished.

Isolation and Good Look

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- The cable itself is pretty weak so we need to make it stronger.

- You can you electric tape but way better method is to use one large heatring tube that will make your cable look more awesome.

- I also try to do this with an old data cable but I find it more difficult and some cables especially cables for charging your phone don’t have the extra pin built-in.

What You Can Do With OTG

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- Now I will show you a few options how you can use your OTG cable.

- Here I have a keyboard which works very good on my nexus 5. I was able to type 2-3 times faster compared to the android keyboard

- The mouse is working fine as well but I personally haven’t found a practical use.

- For me the best benefit of OTG is that you can put file from your phone to your USB key or hard drive.

- For this part your phone must be rooted and you have to install an app called stickmount which will detect your usb drive and mount it to the path written on the screen.

Stickmount app on ggoogle play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.c...

Thank You

Thank you guys for watching my tutorial. That really means something to me and it really keeps me motivated. I also made a video with better instructions on youtube so please subscribe, like and share it so other people can see it.

You can help and support me on patreon. With that money I will upgrade my tools and renovate my workshop. http://www.patreon.com/jakesworkshop

Facebook page : https://www.facebook.com/jakesworkshop

Music by:

-Lensko - Let's Go

-Lensko - Cetus

Thank you all for support