How to get USB slave content to auto-display?

[Guest Culbin]

Hello. I promise I've looked carefully through this forum but cannot find a solution to my problem so creating a new topic. I hope it helps me and others understand the best way to deal with content on USB sticks and so on.

I bought my Vega for an elderly technophobe parent because the Android OS and touch screen is much easier for them to use than a PC with mouse and keyboard. I was thinking they would simply plug in a USB stick and any photos on that USB stick would display automatically as a slide show. (I know I could buy a digital photo frame but I want other things the Vega can provide.) After I realised the USB port was a slave not a host I installed the r8 mcr and switched the USB port from slave to host.

The problem is even with the USB host port working nothing happens when you plug in a USB stick. If you want to look at the content you have to drill down through folders in iFileManager that don't make sense to non-techie users.

What I'm looking for is a way of auto-displaying content on the USB stick, or better still a way of automatically copying the data from the USB stick to the SD card so it's there automatically in the gallery.

I looked at the gscript_USB_in_gallery option but the readme states "make sure you run the unmount script otherwise it can cause problems with data corruption" so this is not something I want to consider for my elderly parent who will certainly forget to do that.

Has anyone else worked through a similar issue and found a suitable solution. Any guidance much appreciated.

This forum is fantastic by the way! Brilliant work done by all.

Thanks.

[Guest Zebrahead]

Hello. I promise I've looked carefully through this forum but cannot find a solution to my problem so creating a new topic. I hope it helps me and others understand the best way to deal with content on USB sticks and so on.

I bought my Vega for an elderly technophobe parent because the Android OS and touch screen is much easier for them to use than a PC with mouse and keyboard. I was thinking they would simply plug in a USB stick and any photos on that USB stick would display automatically as a slide show. (I know I could buy a digital photo frame but I want other things the Vega can provide.) After I realised the USB port was a slave not a host I installed the r8 mcr and switched the USB port from slave to host.

The problem is even with the USB host port working nothing happens when you plug in a USB stick. If you want to look at the content you have to drill down through folders in iFileManager that don't make sense to non-techie users.

What I'm looking for is a way of auto-displaying content on the USB stick, or better still a way of automatically copying the data from the USB stick to the SD card so it's there automatically in the gallery.

I looked at the gscript_USB_in_gallery option but the readme states "make sure you run the unmount script otherwise it can cause problems with data corruption" so this is not something I want to consider for my elderly parent who will certainly forget to do that.

Has anyone else worked through a similar issue and found a suitable solution. Any guidance much appreciated.

This forum is fantastic by the way! Brilliant work done by all.

Thanks.

Well, you I could write a script to do it for you but I'm not familiar with gscript (I tend to just write them and run them using a shell). but you could just do something like this :

#!/bin/sh


if [ ! -d /sdcard/usbphotos ]; then


  mkdir /sdcard/usbphotos


fi


for usbpic in `find <insert USB stick root here> | grep .jpg$`

do


  cp "$usbpic" /sdcard/usbphotos/


done


return 0


[/codebox]

What this does is makes /sdcard/usbphotos if it doesn't already exist, and then for each .jpg file in the usb stick, copy it to /sdcard/usbphotos. That way, when gallery opens, it should pick them up ^^.

Zeb

[Guest trevor432990]

Does your aged parent have wi-fi at their residence? If so I suggest rather than using USB stick why not put the album on the cloud and use an app like Flickr which allows them to view the photo album online that way when you have fresh pics they'll always be able to see them rather than having to wait for you to update a USB stick?

Then just have to get a widget to handle the connection and navigation to pics within Flickr and stick it on the Home page with a label saying 'Click Here' :mellow:

A list of photo sharing websites can be found here

Edited April 28, 2011 by trevor432990

[Guest Culbin]

Does your aged parent have wi-fi at their residence? If so I suggest rather than using USB stick why not put the album on the cloud and use an app like Flickr which allows them to view the photo album online that way when you have fresh pics they'll always be able to see them rather than having to wait for you to update a USB stick?

Then just have to get a widget to handle the connection and navigation to pics within Flickr and stick it on the Home page with a label saying 'Click Here' :mellow:

A list of photo sharing websites can be found here

Excellent suggestions, and yes they do have wi-fi. I'll definitely think through the cloud concept.

There's one other reason I'd still like to have some USB option though, they have a digital camera which has a normal SD card and not a microSD card which the Vega takes. If they could put the camera's SD card into a USB card reader and the Vega read that it would be perfect.

[Guest Culbin]

Well, you I could write a script to do it for you but I'm not familiar with gscript (I tend to just write them and run them using a shell). but you could just do something like this :

#!/bin/sh


if [ ! -d /sdcard/usbphotos ]; then


  mkdir /sdcard/usbphotos


fi


for usbpic in `find <insert USB stick root here> | grep .jpg$`

do


  cp "$usbpic" /sdcard/usbphotos/


done


return 0


[/codebox]

What this does is makes /sdcard/usbphotos if it doesn't already exist, and then for each .jpg file in the usb stick, copy it to /sdcard/usbphotos. That way, when gallery opens, it should pick them up ^^.

Zeb

This looks like a neat concept. I'm not familiar with gscript but I'm now going to start reading up on it and see if I can get that to work. Thanks so much!

[Guest trevor432990]

Excellent suggestions, and yes they do have wi-fi. I'll definitely think through the cloud concept.

There's one other reason I'd still like to have some USB option though, they have a digital camera which has a normal SD card and not a microSD card which the Vega takes. If they could put the camera's SD card into a USB card reader and the Vega read that it would be perfect.

If the camera has a mini-USB connection then chances are that with the right lead the Vega would be able to view the pics straight from the camera without having to take the SD card out.

[Guest Culbin]

If the camera has a mini-USB connection then chances are that with the right lead the Vega would be able to view the pics straight from the camera without having to take the SD card out.

Good point, I'll check that out too. Thanks!

[Guest stevieb1973]

Good point, I'll check that out too. Thanks!

Dropbox .. I love it! Works well on my Vega

[Guest Culbin]

Well, you I could write a script to do it for you but I'm not familiar with gscript (I tend to just write them and run them using a shell). but you could just do something like this :

#!/bin/sh


if [ ! -d /sdcard/usbphotos ]; then


  mkdir /sdcard/usbphotos


fi


for usbpic in `find <insert USB stick root here> | grep .jpg$`

do


  cp "$usbpic" /sdcard/usbphotos/


done


return 0


[/codebox]

What this does is makes /sdcard/usbphotos if it doesn't already exist, and then for each .jpg file in the usb stick, copy it to /sdcard/usbphotos. That way, when gallery opens, it should pick them up ^^.

Zeb

Hi Zeb.

I'm hitting some trouble and need some advice if you can help please.

The line

[codebox]
for usbpic in `find mnt/usb/system.usb/DCIM/101MSDCF | grep .jpg$`

gives the error

    stderr: cp: can't stat `find mnt/usb/system.usb/DCIM/101MSDCF | grep .jpg$`

    No such file or directory

[/codebox]

But I have verified that the path is correct by running the following code

[codebox]
cd mnt/usb/system.usb/DCIM/101MSDCF
ls

and it does correctly list the content of that folder.

Do you have any idea what could be the problem? I'd really appreciate it. Thanks.

[Guest Zebrahead]

...

Lol ^^, it seems simple :mellow:

When you do cd, you're currently in the root directory, and so, it assumes mnt/usb/system.usb/DCIM/101MSDCF starts from root, which it does! (Absolute path : /mnt/usb/system.usb/DCIM/101MSDCF).

When you do find, you're not in root (I guess... you're in wherever the shell is running), and so, the directory mnt/usb/system.usb/DCIM/101MSDCF is not in the current one!

To fix :

for usbpic in `find /mnt/usb/system.usb/DCIM/101MSDCF | grep .jpg$`

(Note the "/" in front of "mnt/.......")

You just need to specify that mnt/.... is in root ^^

Zeb

EDIT : This is the whole thing ^^

#!/bin/sh


if [ ! -d /sdcard/usbphotos ]; then


  mkdir /sdcard/usbphotos


fi


if [ ! -d /mnt/usb/system.usb/DCIM/101MSDCF ]; then


  for usbpic in `find /mnt/usb/system.usb/DCIM/101MSDCF | grep .jpg$`

  do


    cp "$usbpic" /sdcard/usbphotos/


  done


fi



return 0


[/codebox]

Again, assuming you only want jpegs ^^

Edited April 29, 2011 by Zebrahead