How to connect Google Glass to Windows

I recently got my hands on a Google Glass, the Android-based head-mounted display developed by Google. While connecting to it and installing apps works like a charm on my Linux system, it was quite a hassle to do the same with Windows.

I found a quite nice tutorial which I had to adapt to Windows 8: In a nutshell, we have to convince the Google usb driver that it fits to the Glass device and due to the editing we have to convince Windows 8, that it is okay for the driver’s signature to mismatch. Please proceed at your own responsibility.

  1. Connect the Google Glass to your PC and watch how the driver installation fails. If it does work: congratulations, you are done!
  2. Note the VID and the PID of your connected Glass. You can find them via Device Manager → Portable Devices → Glass 1 → Properties → Details → Hardware Ids.
  3. Open <sdk>\extras\google\usb_driver\android_winusb.inf
  4. Add the following lines using the VID and PID from step 2 to sections [Google.NTx86] and [Google.NTamd64]:
    ;Google Glass
    %SingleAdbInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_0000&PID_0000&REV_0216
    %CompositeAdbInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_0000&PID_0000&MI_01
    
    %SingleAdbInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_0000&PID_0000&REV_0216
    %CompositeAdbInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_0000&PID_0000&MI_01
    
  5. Go to the device manager and update the drivers.
  6. If you are not running Windows 8, you are done. If you are, the following error will occur: “The hash for the file is not present in the specified catalog file. The file is likely corrupt or the victim of tampering”. This is because we have altered the .INF-file and now the signature does not match anymore.
  7. Go back to the file android_winusb.inf and search for the lines
    CatalogFile.NTx86   = androidwinusb86.cat
    CatalogFile.NTamd64 = androidwinusba64.cat
    

    and comment them out:

    ;CatalogFile.NTx86   = androidwinusb86.cat
    ;CatalogFile.NTamd64 = androidwinusba64.cat
    
  8. Now, you will get a different error: “The third-party INF does not contain digital signature information”. Well, this security check is great but since we know what we are doing … : Do an “Advanced Startup” (just press the windows key and type it in, then go to Troubleshoot → Advanced options → Start up settings → Restart.
  9. Disable driver signature enforcement in the boot menu.
  10. Update your drivers again in the device manager and this time skip the driver signature enforcement.
  11. Google Glass should now be recognized correctly. Restart your computer if you want to re-enable the driver signature enforcement.

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