Communicating with Arduino

Why?

Arduino popular robotics and automation platform - see [Practical Arduino], etc.

[Jurgen] demonstrates interfacing S60 phone with robot via Bluetooth. Also !!!!

How?

All standard phones support USB guest/slave mode. Only phones from 2010 support USB host mode (i.e., like a PC...) - e.g., Nokia N8, C7. Therefore we want to have phones acting as USB guests and connect them to Arduino, which needs to act as a USB host.

a USB host shield from http://www.circuitsathome.com/ (I personally bought it from a local retailer that got a compatible USB host shield from Sparkfun - see http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9947.
   I have used successfully https://github.com/felis/USB_Host_Shield (the board_test example) and https://github.com/felis/Arduino-Bluetooth.
   With board_test I tested phones, USB memory sticks, USB Bluetooth sticks and a Sony DSC camera. 

http://www.circuitsathome.com/mcu/bluetooth-code-for-arduino-usb-host

Note: on the internet one can find pages describing attempts of connecting USB port of phones directly to Digital IOs of Arduino. THIS IS NOT FEASIBLE! The USB protocol is much more complex than simple serial Tx/Rx data communication. You need to transform the Arduino in a USB host which is possible ONLY if attaching a USB host shield to it (the solution described in chapter 3!!!! of [Practical_Arduino] is also not good since that transforms Arduno in a USB guest/slave and it is not possible to change the program to implement a USB host).

[Practical_Arduino] book!!!!