Testing USB peripherals on Android VM/Emulator

Question

Is there any way of testing drivers for USB peripheral devices (DVB-T USB Stick) build as kernel module?

I know that Android emulator does't support this and i don't possess any real android device on which i can mess with flashing yet.

Can I somehow pack my build to .iso and run it on VMware? I realize that I would probably need to build it for x86 arch first, but if it works on x86 arch it would probably work on ARM too, right?

Thanks for any replies and suggestions

Answer 1

The Genymotion emulator (https://cloud.genymotion.com) has USB support built-in, thanks to VirtualBox USB. If the compiled virtual machines don't fit your needs (or you need special USB drivers), you can recompile GenymotionVM by using the source code at github (https://github.com/androvm/platform_manifest).

PS: I'm a Genymotion developer.

Answer 2

You can use nox player. It has joystick support, but you can connect almost any usb device to it. I tried a thermal printer and it connected easily.

Answer 3

As you mention, the x86 arch vs ARM arch will be the problem. VirtualBox can give you a passthrough USB devices (although some devices won't work, most should).

But If you plan to use NDK, you must provide arch-targetted libs or compile them on purpose. Sadly i ended up with important differences (endianess, binary libs only available for ARM, etc...) that makes me think a real ARM emulator with USB support would be a plus.

Notice i have heard direct QEMU run should allow USB on ARM. This is something to dig i think.