USB _to_ RJ45 (not from) connection

I have an Android phone which can share its G3 IP connection with my laptop via the provided USB cable. That works fine: the phone notices when the USB cable is plugged into the laptop (presumably because pin 1 is detected at +5vDC), and it will therefore charge while sharing the Internet connection.

I also have a WiFlyer pocket AP with an RJ45 socket for the WAN connection. I'd like to use the phone to provision the AP with its Internet connection (it will request DHCP, which the phone will provide).

Note that this is the exact opposite way round from the many fine conversion cables available which have an RJ45 SOCKET and a USB PLUG, and which are intended to provide an Ethernet signal _from_ the RJ45 connected to a source, _to_ a device which has only a USB socket.

Is there someone who can build me a small box which will provide a voltage on pin 1 of a USB socket sufficient for the phone to notice, and therefore to offer to share the connection; and to convert the signal from pins 2 and 3 of the USB connection to the relevant pins on an RJ45 plug that I can plug into the AP? The box could have a lead with a USB

*PLUG* which could go into an adjacent socket on the laptop, or even a battery-powered USB charger, in order to source its voltage. It could of course also be powered from its own batteries, or from a suitable charger.

There are USB-female to RJ45 male plug converters on the market, but these are clearly no use as they provide no voltage to the USB side, and without this, I don't think the phone will notice that the USB cable has been plugged into something. I imagine these converter blocks are actually aimed at the USB-to-serial-that-uses-an-RJ45 connector, not Ethernet signal handling. It might even be possible to modify one of these to do the job if a suitable voltage feed could be attached; but I don't know enough about Ethernet to know if the connections from a USB feed can simply be spliced to the two data pairs of an RJ45.

///Peter

Reply to
Peter Flynn
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Peter Flynn wrote in part:

Even if mechanically you can hook this up, electrically it is FUBAR without active components (your laptop).

10bateT and 100baseTX ethernet use 4 paired conductors, one pair in each direction at upto 100 Mb/s. The pocket AP requires this. USB uses 4 conductors, one pair for bi-directional data at upto 480 Mb/s, with power and ground on the other two. Voltage levels and signalling protocol are also incompatible.

I suspect the RJ45 (actually 8p8c MC) to USB adapters are merely to use common cat5 cables & fixed wiring to carry USB signals to remote (ceiling?) equipment via adapters on both ends.

OTOH, there should be a pure software solution for you: I believe most Android phones also have built-in 802.11b/g wifi. With the right software, it should bridge to G3. No pocket AP needed. Look up "tethering" on you favorite search engine.

-- Robert

Reply to
Robert Redelmeier

(snip)

Well, at least it needs active computation devices in between.

USB is commonly used in place of ethernet for connection to cable modems and to WiFi adapters. It seems likely that ethernet data is sent through the connection, but that active circuitry, likely with a CPU, is used in between.

-- glen

Reply to
glen herrmannsfeldt

Precisely. That's why I am looking for someone who knows how to build this.

Note that the little solid-block ones on the market are USB to RJ45, not RJ45 to USB, and have no active circuitry.

In theory, yes. But all these applications require rooting the Android phone, which means replacing the installed image with another one, and a considerable degree of risk due to the poor and patchy documentation available for rooting the phones (this one is a Hero). A built solution as I described has the advantage that it will work with any similar device sharing out a USB Ethernet connection.

///Peter

Reply to
Peter Flynn

You might be able to do it with a powered USB hub and one of those USB/wifi dongles sold for laptops. But then you will need to put a custom driver on the Android to drive the dongle.

I thought Hotspotting was built-into Android 2.2 Froyo

-- Robert

Reply to
Robert Redelmeier

That would defeat the objective of using the Hero...

I have no idea, but this is a Hero. I don't think Froyo is available for Heros yet (if ever). At least not from HTC, or it would have appeared in Updates (I assume).

///Peter

Reply to
Peter Flynn

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