- Thu Jul 20, 2006 6:11 am
#16051
I keep running across something called USB On-The-Go. What exactly is this? Is it a new "version"? What is the difference between OTG and regular USB?
OTG is a USB device that can be used as a limited host. Physical connection is a special Mini series adapter. It's called a mini A/B. You've probably seen the Mini B on cameras.
The idea for this is to allow, for instance, a PDA with an OTG controller to act as a normal sync peripheral to a PC (when a Mini B cable is plugged in), but interact with and control, say, a keyboard or even access a hard drive when a Mini A plug is connected to the same port.
The controllers support only a few, usually standardized profiles (mass storage is popular and any OTG cameras probably support a Printer profile). You'll still need supporting firmware, too. I haven't seen any product that's not running a 100MHz+ processor (PDAs w/ ARM chips) or DSP have OTG functionality... yet. It might be possible to make an 8 bit OTG board, but I haven't looked into the functionality (AKA read that section of my USB Complete book or looked at the usb.org documents on it)