Droid gets a USB hack allowing it to control printers and cameras, humans put on alert
By Vladislav Savov 
posted Feb 10th 2010 4:27AM
posted Feb 10th 2010 4:27AM
Time to resurrect that old Droid Does chant, folks. Already headed for Android 2.1 from official sources, the Droid is gettings some extra software capabilities courtesy of a few benevolent UK hackers as well. Chris Paget has revealed a mod for Motorola's flagship that turns it from a USB peripheral into a USB host, thereby letting it communicate with and control USB devices that speak the Linux language. That includes printers, webcams, and the vast majority of other things you typically jack into your computer. Mind you, this is one hack that'll require you to get your hands dirty, as you'll need to splice a few cables together and reboot your phone to switch between modes, but that's how real modders do it anyway, right?
This is what the iPad needs!
@BUNT2 you mean android, right ?
@BUNT2 ... or a USB port ? or multi-tasking ? :-) in fact iPad needs a lot...
@BUNT2
Never gonna happen. Apple will make sure the device is used only for its primary purpose: sell stuff.
@BUNT2 What, spliced cables??
@phearme I like this article's juxtaposition beside Opera's iPhone dismay :D
@BUNT2
Apple will probably do it in a more practical way. We've already seen the camera connection kit but there are also traces of printing support in iPhone OS 3.2 which would almost certainly be used wirelessly instead of plugging it into your iPhone/iPad directly. Certainly you'll be able to do more via raw USB host support on Android but of course Apple makes mainstream consumer products so they have a different set of priorities.
In case folks didn't know, the iPhone, and thus iPodTouch and iPad can print wirelessly. For HP printers you can use HP iPrint. There's one for Lexmark too, but don't know about others.
@Patrick 2
So can android devices, that is not the point. The point is, if you don't have an existing host acting as a wireless server, that the Droid can be directly connected and host the given USB device. iPoo's don't have a USB port, thus this would be a heck of a lot more work to pull off (wire splicing and dock port hacks) thus probably won't happen.
If it can fully support my ps3 controller, I'm down to get dirty.
@horchata definitely
@horchata
You just gave me a great idea for a head-mounted bracket that will hang the phone a couple of inches in front of your eyes. The Bracket plus a PS3 controller will be like gaming on a large TV. You also get the added bonus of looking cool on the bus. PATENT PENDING!
@horchata
This was more or less my first thought, too! I had looked around at any possible way to use a gamepad for the Droid a while back, and it seemed that USB was impossible because of that host issue. There are a couple bluetooth possibilities, but nothing like what's available USB! I can't wait to see what kind of crazy stuff comes out of this.
Is it possible to output video over USB?
@l3reakmanx Technicall, yeah. You might have to do some coding yourself though, we don't really seem to know at this point what the hack includes.
ie. Does it "just" make the Droid a host, or does it actually include any capability - I can imagine drivers being an issue for a lot of things.
This will be so cool if it is embraced by motorola, google, htc, etc. Just imagine that there will not be a real need for a laptop to send my pictures out, or to even print them, I'm loving it already!
@Zomer Many printers no longer need a PC to print, just plug in memory stick or memory card and voila
@Zomer
Actually a substandard of USB, USB-On-The-Go, has existed to do just that. My Toshiba Portege G900 has got it, and freaks people out when i plug their USB stick in the dongle and copy the files on it... lol :D
howly shit this is awsome :D
I never understood why USB Host was not there by default on all these smartphones / PDAs / PMPs.
A second mini-USB port fits in these devices without any problem, and software drivers (at least for Universal Mass Storage devices) are already there for linux based OSes.
@thewild True. All of those korean PMPs I had since 2004 have the USB host function.
@thewild
Because offering it as a feature and then trying to provide support would be extremely frustrating.
I've had USB host on my WinMo and Maemo devices for years, and it's really great being able to plug in a standard flash drive or card reader on-the-go for quick file access.
But could you imagine the tech support calls for when people can't understand why their smartphones can't power an external 2.5" drive just like their laptops? Not to mention a plethora of other high-power USB devices, like tuners, 3G/network access, etc.
@fh
You have a point, but this is true for all features.
I see a lot of pretty good workarounds for this problem.
They could advertise it as "only supporting USB keys" for instance. That's what the vast majority of people would use it for.
They could also tweak the USB Host driver so that a (friendly) error message is thrown to the user whenever something sucking to much juice is plugged in.
I still believe this should be a stock option.
yeah well, modding has left me with more than 100lb of paper weight (like for factory purposes.)
oh well. I will try not to mess up this time.
USB OTG should be implemented more.
lol, so does this mean you can technically plug an iPhone into a Droid?
but seriously, it would be great to finally use my PS3 controller as a gamepad while playing games on SNESoid ;)
could also be useful for getting pictures off a friend's camera, or printing out pictures that you've taken with your phone.
We can only hope that this will inspire Motorola to build this functionality into the Shadow :)
p.s. will this work on the G1?
@dracoaffectus If your printer has bluetooth you can already print pictures from the Droid. I print to my Epson every now and then.
@Vladislav Great Headline!
"Droid does"
Let me get my air card out right quick lawl. tired of paying for two data plans.
I wish more phones did stuff like this natively. While some stuff isn't very practical, having your phone work as a USB host would be good for certain peripherals, portable storage, etc.
I used to love this on my Toshiba e800 PDA. Aside from conneting my camera to it to upload images on the go, I used to have a powered 2.5" laptop drive mounted in my glove-box to make a massive juke-box on the go :) Ah, the halcyon days when we could actually do what we wanted with our own hardware...
I like this article
Fingers still crossed for some kind of iPhone implementation of this. Jailbroken obviously. Next phone is definitely going to be an android device :)