Welcome to the Official BlackBerry Support Community Forums. This is your resource to discuss support topics with your peers, and learn from each other. New to the forum? Please visit the ‘Getting Started’ link below.
I have been searching for specific information on how to programatically connect to external devices using the USB port of the Playbook. It appears that the QNX Neutrino system level options don't work, I have tried using system() with some of the usb commands from the utilities (io-usb, usb, ...) with no success. I am attempting to construct an App which would use the USB port of the Playbook to connect to an industrial network such as devicenet or profi-bus as example. Does anyone know if this is possible? If this is related to another post here, admin please relocate it.
Edit Note: Thank you for responding, and the result is pretty much as I had found. I have no contact that I can name for RIM, off of the top of my head. I think that for now I will focus my efforts elsewhere for the Playbook development.
I believe the capabilities for that are either not going to be present at launch, or are simply not documented adequately yet. I'd suggest this is an area where you ought to find someone in RIM to provide more answers, maybe through a private message in this forum, or email if you have a contact.
I think this capability will be supported at some point, but some time after launch. Sorry I don't have anything more concrete for you. I have similar interests...
Note that Bluetooth could provide an effective alternative in some situations, and I believe the basic serial profile is supported now.
It's my pure speculation, but given the current philosophy behind PlayBook and BB 10 OS, maybe my speculation isn't too much wrong. Anyway, it's not only BB problem, other vendors (Apple, Samsung, LG etc etc) also don't allow this out of the box.
Few days ago I played with ultra cheap Chinese junk-tablet (with resistive screen, buuuu), android 2.3.3 and this device had one usb port with support for any usb device (mouse, keyboard, 3g modem) + custom usb Ethernet adapter with 2port usb hub . Dude, that was crazy. Maybe these will find its way into BB 10 devices some day.
PlayBook OS 2 and BlackBerry 10 offer an implementation of the Android Accessory Protocol.
For experimenting, when you plug a (correctly configured) Arduino ADK into your Dev Alpha or PlayBook, /dev/aap0 will appear, and can be used to send serial data between the two devices.
At this time though - there is no way to find WHAT you are talking to - just to talk to it.
2pintsandanaxe, I think you just found that RIM contact I was saying you should look for. ;-)
borceg, RIM has discussed USB-connected Ethernet adapters for their corporate clients from the earliest times the PlayBook was publicly mentioned. The current OS builds are littered with signs of support for them, so if you'd seen those I don't think you'd toss out all the evidence quite so quickly. Again, I don't know if those will be supported at launch (although for the Ethernet adapters, I do expect them with the BB10 launch just because I can't imagine why they'd want to hold them back) but I'm pretty confident they'll be along shortly after if not then. robbieDubya's response is just icing. ;-)
Thanks for the prompt response. Is the Android Accessory Protocol available in Playbook OS version 2.1 SDK? So is this more or less a "dumb terminal" type of connection, just exposing the serial protocol layer?
but till then, we can only speculate 
