Using a keyboard and mouse with the Kindle Fire

After installing CM9, with the 3.x kernel, on my Kindle Fire, I read about people connecting keyboards, mice and other USB devices to the Kindle Fire. In order to do this a USB cable referred to as a OTG cable is needed. I happened to order this one, but there were many options. After I got the cable, I plugged a USB 2.0 powered hub into the OTG cable which was then plugged into the Kindle Fire. A powered hub is essential as the Fire does not put out enough voltage to power most external devices. Also, on the Kindle Fire, you will want to install the applications "StickMount" and "File Expert" from the Google Play store.

Now for the big test. The first thing I did was plug in a USB mouse into the powered USB 2.0 hub.  Much to my surprise a mouse cursor appeared on the screen and I was able to move the mouse around and click a few things. I was wondering if the mouse cursor would appear as the Kindle Fire is a touch screen device. Both the touch screen and the mouse worked at the same time, so nothing was lost. So far so good. I then plugged in my USB keyboard and then I opened a browser window and was able to type in the url on the physical keyboard. So now things are looking pretty promising. The next step was to plug in a USB flash drive. Within a second StickMount popped up a prompt asking me to allow it SuperUser access and then informing me that the USB device had been mounted in /sdcard/usbStorage/sda1. I then used File Expert to navigate to that directory and view the files on the flash drive. Everything seemed to be there and I was able to open and interact with files just like files found on the Kindle internal storage. Perhaps with the right USB flash drive, very low power requirements, the USB hub would not be needed and then you would have a solution to the limited space on the Fire. One of my sticks, a 4GB one, almost worked, but the 32GB one definitely would not.

Now for the things that didn't work. I tried to plug in my 1TB External USB harddrive and while the OS knew something was there, I do not believe the file system drivers were present. I also did not have much luck with my USB Bluetooth adapter. Also while these devices where plugged in I could not charge the Kindle Fire, so I was limited on how long the device would run. This adapter from Amazon may allow you to work around that issue.

So all in all the Fire with the OTG cable, a powered USB 2.0 hub, a USB keyboard and mouse can actually function as a basic computer. Now I would not recommend this setup for full time usage, but if you want something for some basic work that requires a lot of typing on the cheap, this would be one option. I also see no reason why this setup would not work with other Android devices. So if you decide to try this, I would appreciate some feedback.

Upgrading the OS for Android 4.0.4 on the Kindle Fire

I have a Kindle Fire and it is a pretty nice piece of hardware. I use it for reading and watching videos while I travel weekly. But lately I saw that the new Android OS 4.1 (Jelly Bean) was available for it so I wanted to try it out. Needless to say it was an interesting experiment and I thought at one point that I had broken it forever. Luckily, I did not. In the end I decided to not use the Android 4.1, but to drop back to 4.0.4 because it was a little more polished and all my applications worked on it. After the upgrade the Kindle Fire feels like a new device. It responds better, does things I never expected it to do and still does all the great Kindle things I wanted it originally for.

Tools you Need:

On Windows use Kindle File Utility, I would recommend that you not run this in a VM and connect the Fire directly to a motherboard USB port. I had better luck running this tool on Windows .

Run the "install permanent root" part of the setup and that should install FireFireFire (bootloader) and TWRP (recovery tool)

On Linux use FireKit and run the install_fff_twrp_from_stock script as root (this is the actual method I used)

Once FireFireFire and TWRP are installed you now have complete control of what OS to put on the device.

So what I did next is to copy a ROM to a folder on the Kindle, doesn't matter where as TWRP will be able to navigate to it.

I got the Android 4.0.4 ROM (CM9 based) from here: http://rombot.droidhive.com/ROMs/otter/cm9/
I also got the Google apps from here: http://goo.im/gapps make sure to use the 20120429 version of them for CM9.

After the files are copied on to the Kindle, disconnection the Kindle and power it off.

Boot the Kindle (the logo should be blue now, from FireFireFire) and press the power button to boot it into "recovery" mode. This will start TWRP. First thing you should do is make a backup. This will take about 1GB of space on the Kindle so make sure you have room. After the backup is done, wipe the device including data, cache, dalvik (this will not wipe the SD card). After the wipe is done, install the ROM you just downloaded from the directory on the Kindle. Then install the gapps file you downloaded. I would recommend not flashing them at the same time, but to do one at a time.

After that you should be able to reboot your Kindle Fire and have a working Android 4.0.4 system after a few minutes of bootup.

You may also want to install the Amazon Market from here: https://www.amazon.com/app-email so that you can redownload and install the apps you have purchased before.

To enable USB storage access go to Settings -> (Device) Storage and in the top right click on the three dots and select USB Mass Storage


Desktop:

Apps:

Kindle for Android - Book reading
Next Issue - for reading my Entertainment Weekly subscription
MX Player - for playing videos, works great with subtitled .mkv files
Netflix and HBO Go work fine

Enjoy