Newer Androids show up as MTP instead of a mounted drive

[getodk-bot]

Issue by mitchellsundt
Thursday Jul 09, 2015 at 19:02 GMT
Originally opened as getodk/getodk#683 (2 comment(s))

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Originally reported on Google Code with ID 682

Android 3.x and 4.x (Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich/Jelly bean) devices have switch
away from mass-storage class (MSC) transfer protocol to Media Transfer Protocol (MTP)
connection when plugged into a host computer using USB, ODK Briefcase will not recognize
the memory card when selecting "Pull" and then "Mounted SD Card".

This causes a problem since Briefcase was designed to access mounted drives.

Reported by wbrunette on 2012-09-08 01:11:11

[getodk-bot]

Comment by mitchellsundt
Thursday Jul 09, 2015 at 19:02 GMT

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I am trying to find a decent way to implement this for SurveyCTO, then I'm happy to
share with the main ODK branch. However, it seems extremely non-trivial. Almost unbelievably,
there does not appear to be a universal Java library for transacting via MTP. If somebody
who's tagged this issue knows of a non-defunct API or approach, please post it here.
Again, I'm willing to share our implementation, but so far it looks ridiculously difficult
(and platform-specific) and so I may just require users of MTP devices to hand-copy
to their local drives.

Reported by chrislrobert on 2013-01-23 14:40:12

[getodk-bot]

Comment by mitchellsundt
Thursday Jul 09, 2015 at 19:02 GMT

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Thanks Chris. After a casual glance, we were equally stumped. Please do keep us posted.

Reported by mitchellsundt on 2013-01-23 18:20:46

[yanokwa]

MTP is a dead-end and it's unlikely we'll be able to build a reasonable version that lets users connect via USB to Android devices.