OTG Setup on BoxPhone — Scaling 100+ Devices Over LAN

How OTG mode works

Normally BoxPhone connects to the PC through USB — and that's stuck within the USB controller bandwidth of the motherboard (more on this in USB Bandwidth).

OTG mode reroutes the whole connection:

1. The BoxPhone chassis plugs into a switch / router via LAN, not USB
2. Every device inside the box gets its own IP — through DHCP or a static assignment
3. ADB connects through port 5555 (that's ADB-over-network) from the host PC
4. The control PC doesn't need a single USB cable plugged in — it talks over the network

End result: you're no longer stuck on USB. The limit becomes network bandwidth and how many ports your switch has.

Why use OTG

• Push past 100+ devices on one system — no PCIe USB card required
• Less cable mess — one LAN cable per box instead of a bunch of USB cables
• Distance doesn't matter — your PC can sit in a different room as long as it's on the same network
• Multiple PCs at the same time — split devices across 2-3 PCs and have them all control over the network
• Frees up the motherboard's USB — your USB ports stay open for other peripherals
• Easy to add or remove boxes — no crawling behind the PC to swap USB cables

The downsides you have to live with

• Not as steady as USB — packet loss or a congested network causes the odd ADB disconnect that needs a rescan
• Network has to be fast — Gigabit LAN is the minimum. With bots + scrcpy on 100 devices, plan for 1-2 Gbps of headroom.
• You need network/VLAN know-how — IP scheme, VLAN segmentation, DHCP scope management
• Slightly more latency than USB — for real-time work (live games for example), you might feel a bit of lag
• One network failure = everything offline — if the switch or router dies, the whole farm goes dark together
• First setup eats time — every box needs an IP and a scan before you can start working

OTG setup step by step

1. Plug in the LAN cable

Plug the LAN cable from the BoxPhone into the switch, then set each box to its assigned ID (every box has its own ID and has to be mapped the way the system expects).

2. Turn on OTG mode and Port 5555

On the Sikrid dashboard:

1. Click OTG
2. Open port 5555 (that's the ADB-over-network port)
3. Set the IP to match your switch configuration
4. Click ADD

Heads-up: the device screens will flicker off and come back on — let every device come back up. Don't hit stop while that's happening.

3. Flip the mode on the box itself

Press the power button twice on the box itself — the status LED will switch from blue to green, which means the box is in OTG mode and ready.

Then hit Scan All on the dashboard — it'll scan every device on the network.

4. Confirm everything came up

Make sure every device is up. You're good when:

• The status switches from USB to OTG
• Device count matches box count × 20
• Every device shows an IP on the dashboard

Troubleshooting — when the panel doesn't show up

Restarting the app fixes about 90% of cases.

If it doesn't, try these in order:

1. Check that the LAN cable is fully seated and link LEDs are lit on both ends
2. Ping the box's IP and see if it answers
3. Check VLAN config — the port has to be in the same VLAN as the host PC
4. Reboot the switch / box, then run Scan All again

What you need to have ready

Network hardware

• A managed switch with VLAN support — Ruijie, MikroTik, or TP-Link Omada all work
• Gigabit minimum — every port has to run at 1Gbps (10/100 Mbps will bottleneck the moment you pass 20 devices)
• Spare ports — 1 box = 1 port, plus 1-2 ports for the control PC and uplink. Leave 30% headroom.

VLAN know-how

Splitting traffic with VLANs gets you three things on a phone farm:

• Keeps the farm separate from the office network — device traffic doesn't drag down everyone else's internet.
• Groups devices logically — like VLAN 10 = TikTok farm, VLAN 20 = Shopee farm. Each group goes out through a different proxy.
• Security boundary — if one device picks up malware, it doesn't spread across the whole network.

If you've never set up VLANs before, we recommend reading Network Preparation for BoxPhone before you try OTG.

USB vs OTG — which one to pick

Wrapping up

OTG mode is the answer when you have to push past 100 devices — there's just no cleaner way to get around USB bandwidth.

But don't move to OTG before you have to — for 30-60 devices, plain USB is steadier, easier to debug, and doesn't drag you into the network layer at all.

Once you cross 100 devices, get a managed switch, build up your VLAN skills, and accept that the network is now something you actively maintain — not “set it and forget it.”

Don't want to deal with the network yourself? Sikrid has a team that comes in and handles all the network + VLAN + switch config. Talk to us on the Contact page.

FAQ

Read next

• Setting Up a 50-100 Device BoxPhone Farm
• Network Preparation for BoxPhone
• What Is ADB — With Real Commands
• How BoxPhone Works — Under the Hood