1031535 - [Flatfish] Improve USB Drivers Experience for Windows users connecting to the device for development and flashing builds

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox OS Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[Caspy7]

Currently the only method to flash new builds onto Flatfish devices is via a USB connection and Windows users must have the proper drivers for this to work.

It has been a lot of hit and miss as some PCs come with the proper drivers installed while others do not.  And finding the proper drivers in those cases has also been problematic - sometimes the PC manufacturer will have drivers available for download and sometimes they will detect and install properly.

In some cases it leaves us trying to install drivers for other devices hoping it will work for ours.

Optimally there will be a driver download just for Flatfish devices.

Comment 1

[Andrew Truong [:feer56] [:andrewtruong] [:atruong]]

The Geeksphone driver works great, only thing is that you need to actually point Windows to the .inf file and not the folder. It's a bit complicated, but gets the job done.

Comment 2

[William Liang]

Hi Caspy, have you had the PhoenixSuit tool installed on Windows? It will install the chip vendor's driver at these time. We've tested that on Windows 7/8. adb and fastboot works fine so far.

The other two things worth to note: 1. If our contributors are using the PhoenixSuit to burn the fastboot image for a brick device, make sure that the PC USB host controller works in USB 2.0 mode. (USB 3.0 causes some problem when doing this operation.) 2. It is suggested to use the original USB cable come with the Flatfish device. Other cables with 'good enough' quality should also work.

Comment 3

[Caspy7]

Yes, I have PhoenixSuit installed.  Though I had adb/fastboot working before that. Based on what you said it sounds like this gets us the drivers we need. I would like to not stop at "good enough" though, having people install the PhoenixSuit when all they need are those drivers seems excessive. William can you confirm there there is no separate download or installer for just the necessary USB drivers?

Thanks Andrew, that's good to know, I'll keep that in the tool belt. Still looking to reduce steps and complexity, but it sounds like we have an additional viable workaround.

Comment 4

[Jeff Chuang]

(In reply to Caspy7 from comment #3)
> Yes, I have PhoenixSuit installed.  Though I had adb/fastboot working before
> that. Based on what you said it sounds like this gets us the drivers we
> need. I would like to not stop at "good enough" though, having people
> install the PhoenixSuit when all they need are those drivers seems
> excessive. William can you confirm there there is no separate download or
> installer for just the necessary USB drivers?
> 
We will check whether the windows PC can recognize flatfish with only Google USB driver installed.
Eva, please help on this.

Comment 5

[William Liang]

We've tried to installed Google USB Driver. It works for 'adb.exe' when the following information has been added into the file usb_driver\android_winusb.inf, in both [Google.NTx86] and [Google.NTamd64] sections for 32 & 64 bits Windows, respectively.

;Flatfish
%SingleAdbInterface%        = USB_Install, USB\VID_18D1&PID_0003
%CompositeAdbInterface%     = USB_Install, USB\VID_18D1&PID_0003&MI_01

However, fastboot doesn't work. (This issue has also been added into our to-do list.)

As a result, so far we still suggest the contributors to install PhoenixSuit, which can also be used to recover the system when it becomes brick.

Thanks.

Comment 6

[Iean Lin]

My "android_winusb.inf" settings:

[Google.NTx86]
;Flatfish
%SingleBootLoaderInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_0BB4&PID_0FFF
%CompositeAdbInterface%     = USB_Install, USB\VID_18D1&PID_0003&MI_01

[Google.NTamd64]
;Flatfish
%SingleBootLoaderInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_0BB4&PID_0FFF
%CompositeAdbInterface%     = USB_Install, USB\VID_18D1&PID_0003&MI_01

Both "adb.exe" & "fastboot.exe" on Windows XP work well.

Comment 7

[Joe Cheng [:jcheng] (please needinfo)]

discussion going on, clearing needinfo flag

Comment 8

[BMO Automation]

Firefox OS is not being worked on