Can my mobile phone be the master processor to control another micro processor via the phone's USB port?

Question

I want to use my cell phone in a data acquisition application, but I need to have the phone talk to a small datalogger. I'd like to use the cell phone's USB port to talk to the datalogger, but I'm not sure if a cell phone can communicate with a micro controller in this way. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Most cell phones, especially the newest, have very powerful processors controlling them , as well as all the peripherals like video, text and games that are packaged with them. They are certainly capable of being a client or server in an application that links them through any type of I/O using WiFi or USB interfaces that they have onboard.

Some use embedded systems like Windows CE, or embedded Linux with Java... The trouble is getting the specs and hooks into these systems from the manufacturer or OEM of the phone. They hold this info dearly because they want to be a single source for apps written for them. Subscribe to some of the embedded systems forums on the web for more info. Try these links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embedded_Linux

http://www.opengroup.org/rtforum/index.tpl

https://www.ieeecommunities.org/embedded