Huawei 3G USB Dongle Support (need volunteers)

[Guest JordanT92]

Hi All, looking for anyone with a Huawei 3G USB dongle who is willing to attempt to connect it to their Vega and see if it works, all I'm looking for is the dongle to turn on, flashing LEDs would be great, for the Vega to actually start working on 3G would be amazing. But flashing LEDs is a great start

Any feedback would be great. Thanks.

Edited January 7, 2011 by JordanT92

[Guest debs626]

Hi All, looking for anyone with a Huawei 3G USB dongle who is willing to attempt to connect it to their Vega and see if it works, all I'm looking for is the dongle to turn on, flashing LEDs would be great, for the Vega to actually start working on 3G would be amazing. But flashing LEDs is a great start

USB Host Download (you'll need the performance pack and clockworkmod)

Any feedback would be great. Thanks.

I have the Huawei E 160 G (3) and the 160 (O2) but I'm not confident enough to perform the clockworkmod ...... sorry :) will test it once Paul has worked his magic and released an updated rom.

Edited December 16, 2010 by debs626

[Guest JordanT92]

I have the Huawei E 160 G (3) and the 160 (O2) but I'm not confident enough to perform the clockworkmod ...... sorry :) will test it once Paul has worked his magic and released an updated rom.

Instead of using ClockworkMod, you could copy the flash_image file included in the ClockworkMod package to /data/tools/, that's the only file that's needed from the mod, just didn't want to include it as it isn't mine to include. Less risky than flashing a new restore.img, but this flashes a new boot.img anyway...

[Guest ChazW123]

Hi All, looking for anyone with a Huawei 3G USB dongle who is willing to attempt to connect it to their Vega and see if it works, all I'm looking for is the dongle to turn on, flashing LEDs would be great, for the Vega to actually start working on 3G would be amazing. But flashing LEDs is a great start

USB Host Download (you'll need the performance pack and clockworkmod)

Any feedback would be great. Thanks.

I tried a work colleagues T-Mobile mobile broadband dongle and it powered up fine, red light to start with which changed to blue (which it apparently does when connected to a laptop when it's ready to connect up) but no internet connection was achieved.

Guessing we need some sort of driver installed for it to be picked up as a data source ?

On a crappy £100 chinese iped I have their is a 3G data option in the Android settings > Wireless settings menu where I had to put in the connection details (username and password, etc) for it to work, guess we need something similar ?

[Guest b0bsquish]

I have a Huawei E180, just tried plugging it in... doesn't light up at all.

[Guest JordanT92]

My colleagues Huawei E172 powers up and flashes green ;) but of course, the Android running on the Vega is modified to remove the 3G option... so time for Paul to do a bit of modding? :) If not, i'll give it a shot. Need to get the 3G settings to show up...

[Guest rferrett]

I have an O2 Huawei E160.

I not sure I have the confidence to to install the switch myself so I might wait and see how the R6 mod goes.

Though as I have a Huawei dongle kicking about I shall watch this thread with interest!

[Guest toibs]

havent any Huawei, however have two ZTE's kicking about (MF626/MF627) if help needed on those....

Paul

[Guest JingleManSweep]

Just got USB Host working on my Vega.

Wanted to say that I've just plugged in my Huawei E160G USB Dongle (on Three UK) into my Vega. The lights flashed green (found 2G network) then blue (found 3G network). It didn't actually connect as the dongle light needs to be a constant blue and not flashing.

Basically, the Vega is missing the necessary "Settings" section to configure the device (such as APNs, usernames and passwords).

Hope this helps someone!

[Guest rferrett]

Sweet.

Incidently anyone know of where one can cheaply (or even for free) unlock Huawei dongles?

[Guest 2old2mould]

I know this isn't exactly the point but... I use the '3' Mifi dongle when I'm out which means I can connect my Vega and my N1 to the device at the same time. It's an excellent piece of kit and I got the newer black one on a super deal from Maplins when they came out. If you get them on contract now from 3 they are exellent value and have an enormous data allowance.

2o2m.

[Guest ChazW123]

Sweet.

Incidently anyone know of where one can cheaply (or even for free) unlock Huawei dongles?

Carphone warehouse sell them, don't quote me but I got told that the "3" ones the sell at £8.99 are network unlocked, so any sim card will work (http://www.carphonewarehouse.com/broadband/mobile-broadband), I might get one if we can get the 3G options enabled on the Vega :)

[Guest arad85]

I know this isn't exactly the point but... I use the '3' Mifi dongle when I'm out which means I can connect my Vega and my N1 to the device at the same time. It's an excellent piece of kit and I got the newer black one on a super deal from Maplins when they came out. If you get them on contract now from 3 they are exellent value and have an enormous data allowance.

2o2m.

I'm looking at one of those as the company pay for my phone, but won't enable GPRS!! What's coverage like? £18 for 15G/month seems like a good deal as the kids could stream videos when in the car with that much allowance.

[Guest rferrett]

Aha, been looking around t'interwebs for free unlock codes and lots of folks say they can but all look dodgy sites! If we get it working would be handy being able to hot swap when travelling and that!

[Guest lnux9898]

Aha, been looking around t'interwebs for free unlock codes and lots of folks say they can but all look dodgy sites! If we get it working would be handy being able to hot swap when travelling and that!

If you are comfortable with the command line, search for unlock huawei codes. There is a site that will generate codes online for free. I have been able to unlock off-contract dongles using their results.

To be relevant to the original post, I was doing some research this morning and it seems we should be able to get dongles working, at the worst, when the kernel code is released. This page fills me with hope.

[Guest lnux9898]

I did some testing, trying to get the Vega to work with a 3G dongle. I was hoping that pppd would do the trick. Long story short, ppp support is not built into the kernel or could I build a working module off the nvidia source code. So when Advent releases the kernel source, we will need to a build a kernel with USB Host & PPP. *fingers crossed*

And I will post my steps I carried when I get back home.

[Guest rferrett]

Cricket so fingers crossed and all that!

[Guest lnux9898]

Sorry it has taken me a while to post my actions -- it was simply crazy getting home last night.

Anyway, my setup: I work on macbook pro and my Vega has the 1.06.5 ROM with Paul's R5 with all the fix'ens and Clockwork image. I then applied the USB Host image via GScript. Upon reboot, I plugged in an off-contract Huawei E160 dongle and right away, dongle's status light flashed green. Great, my Vega was in USB Host mode!

I enabled Wireless ADB on the Vega and opened a shell using 'adb shell'. First thing, did the vega actually see the dongle? Using 'dmesg', I found saw this nugget:

<6>[ 6223.974196] usb 1-1: new full speed USB device using tegra-ehci and address 2

<6>[ 6224.113941] usb 1-1: New USB device found, idVendor=12d1, idProduct=1001

<6>[ 6224.120834] usb 1-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=1

<6>[ 6224.128248] usb 1-1: Product: HUAWEI Mobile

<6>[ 6224.132880] usb 1-1: Manufacturer: ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ

<6>[ 6224.140126] usb 1-1: SerialNumber: ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ

<6>[ 6224.151663] usb 1-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice

Good sign - Android OS could see the dongle.

Reviewing how other tablets, like the X5A, ePad, etc supported dongles - basically from opening their ROMs - I saw that they were using the PPP deamon. In each of the ROM's, there was no explicit pppd kernel module (I was looking for a file that ended with a .ko) so pppd support was built directly into the kernel. I setup a peer file under /etc/ppp/peers called '1-1' and then a simple ppp script which returns the status of the dongle, placed in /etc/ppp. The 1-1 comes from the dmesg output. The kickstart the conversation with the dongle I used this command:

pppd call 1-1

The response was far from great:

pppd: This system lacks kernel support for PPP. This could be because

the PPP kernel module could not be loaded, or because PPP was not

included in the kernel configuration. If PPP was included as a

module, try `/sbin/modprobe -v ppp'. If that fails, check that

ppp.o exists in /lib/modules/`uname -r`/net.

See README.linux file in the ppp distribution for more details.

So as far as I can tell, we need the source code to move forward ;-)

Sorry to put a dampers on everyone's morning.

Edited December 21, 2010 by lnux9898

[Guest 2old2mould]

I'm looking at one of those as the company pay for my phone, but won't enable GPRS!! What's coverage like? £18 for 15G/month seems like a good deal as the kids could stream videos when in the car with that much allowance.

Oops, sorry for late response, bad weather, hangovers etc etc...

I had the same issue with travelling for work but having no access to the Internet for personal use.

The 3 Mifi is excellent. I've yet to go somewhere it hasn't worked. The only issue I have had is that in some areas, especially near large apartment complexes where there may be many '3' users, it appears that the bandwidth is throttled back, which means the device performs quite slowly. Otherwise I couldn't be happier with it.

I'm on a PAYG contract which is £10 for 1Gb which lasts a month before expiring. If the allowance expires you can still use the MiFi to log on to the 3 store and add more credit so I don't really see the need for a contract for me.

I strongly recommend it :-)

[Guest arad85]

Oops, sorry for late response, bad weather, hangovers etc etc...

I had the same issue with travelling for work but having no access to the Internet for personal use.

The 3 Mifi is excellent. I've yet to go somewhere it hasn't worked. The only issue I have had is that in some areas, especially near large apartment complexes where there may be many '3' users, it appears that the bandwidth is throttled back, which means the device performs quite slowly. Otherwise I couldn't be happier with it.

I'm on a PAYG contract which is £10 for 1Gb which lasts a month before expiring. If the allowance expires you can still use the MiFi to log on to the 3 store and add more credit so I don't really see the need for a contract for me.

I strongly recommend it :-)

I know what you mean about hangovers :)

Thanks for the info. Now to decide if I want to tie myself into a contract (would probably go for the 15G/month at £18.33 just cos it's a known amount) or do PAYG. Problem is, I'm not sure if I'd use 100M/month or 10G/month (I can be a heavy user and it would provide a backup incase we lost internet connection here which does happen occasionally)...

[Guest JordanT92]

Sorry it has taken me a while to post my actions -- it was simply crazy getting home last night.

Anyway, my setup: I work on macbook pro and my Vega has the 1.06.5 ROM with Paul's R5 with all the fix'ens and Clockwork image. I then applied the USB Host image via GScript. Upon reboot, I plugged in an off-contract Huawei E160 dongle and right away, dongle's status light flashed green. Great, my Vega was in USB Host mode!

I enabled Wireless ADB on the Vega and opened a shell using 'adb shell'. First thing, did the vega actually see the dongle? Using 'dmesg', I found saw this nugget:

Good sign - Android OS could see the dongle.

Reviewing how other tablets, like the X5A, ePad, etc supported dongles - basically from opening their ROMs - I saw that they were using the PPP deamon. In each of the ROM's, there was no explicit pppd kernel module (I was looking for a file that ended with a .ko) so pppd support was built directly into the kernel. I setup a peer file under /etc/ppp/peers called '1-1' and then a simple ppp script which returns the status of the dongle, placed in /etc/ppp. The 1-1 comes from the dmesg output. The kickstart the conversation with the dongle I used this command:

pppd call 1-1

The response was far from great:

So as far as I can tell, we need the source code to move forward ;-)

Sorry to put a dampers on everyone's morning.

Thanks for the information, without the source code our only other option is to get the boot.img from the Pioneer Dreambook ePad P10, the hardware side is identical but has a Sony Ericsson F3307 module for the 3G and GPS side of things. So pppd support is obviously built in to the kernel, and it's also USB host instead of slave and supports USB 3G dongles. We need a dump of the boot.img or an official firmware update and it should work, in theory... It's just getting hold of that file. I've emailed Pioneer Australia support team asking for a restore image, but haven't received anything back from them yet.

[Guest ChazW123]

Ref. the Dreambook. See on http://www.slatedroid.com/index.php?topic=4540.0, think there is a link there for the firmware ? :)

[Guest JordanT92]

Ref. the Dreambook. See on http://www.slatedroid.com/index.php?topic=4540.0, think there is a link there for the firmware ? :)

Unfortunately, that firmware is for a different Dreambook, there are a few that have similar names, we need the P10 firmware which uses NVFLASH as the Vega does.

[Guest lnux9898]

Unfortunately, that firmware is for a different Dreambook, there are a few that have similar names, we need the P10 firmware which uses NVFLASH as the Vega does.

Agreed with Jordan - we do need the kernel for a nvidia-based tablet that supports 3G. I wish that Vega would release the source already.

I am going to see if I can get lucky and build the ppp module with the generic nvidia kernel source. Aha

[Guest JordanT92]

Agreed with Jordan - we do need the kernel for a nvidia-based tablet that supports 3G. I wish that Vega would release the source already.

I am going to see if I can get lucky and build the ppp module with the generic nvidia kernel source. Aha

I doubt the generic nvidia kernel would work :/ we need the vega source.