Dell's USB OTG dual charging dongle for the Dell Venue 8 Pro

I've finally put my Dell Venue 8 to good use. It has been in the drawer since I got it months ago. After a week of usage, it really didn't fit my use-case. Even with a portable bluetooth keyboard, I found the whole touch experience with Windows 8.1 on an 8" screen painful. I never even use Modern UI, just the traditional Dekstop and using your fingers is hopeless. Desktop operating systems simply do not work with touch on a small screen.

Then out of nowhere, Dell releases a USB-OTG cable that simultaneously supports charging. It is roughly $20 on Dell's website. For those who don't understand the significance, it now means you can charge the Venue 8 at the same time you are using a USB device. Before, you couldn't do that.Thus, the single micro USB port limited it's use as a full time desktop computer.

There has been some D-Y-I type affairs but I wasn't keen on taking that route. This official dongle works pretty good. This should have been provided from the get-go or made available at release of the Venue 8. I paired it up with my Microsoft's All-in-One Multimedia keyboard. The keyboard has a built in trackpad, so now I treat the Venue like a little mini laptop.

I also have a hoot USB 3.0 3-port hub with built in Gigabit. Once you plug it in, you can make up for the lack of networking and multiple USB. It looks like this:

Now, it is a good VPN terminal. I run Cygwin and I use it as SSH client. When I don't use the Dell Venue, it simply stows away nicely.

Adventures in USB OTG

One of the greatest feature of “certain” Android devices is the ability to connect to USB devices via OTG (On-the-Go). Your phone or tablet is no longer the device but the host. You have the ability to connect USB drives as mass storage or the ability to plug in a mouse or keyboard.

For me, the coolest thing is the ability to use a phone or tablet as a vt100/hyperterminal/minicom terminal. For years, in data centers, I used a IBM Workpad Z50 (Windows CE) or a Windows laptop running hyperterm to connect to switches, routers, firewalls, UPS and the likes.

For less than $2 (Amazon Link )

you can get an OTG cable to work with your Android device.

I was able to successfully connect a Galaxy Nexus and a Galaxy Tab 2 7” (using a different 30-pin to OTG cable) to various switches and firewalls.

That was a geek epiphany moment