Want to plug a flash drive, mouse, or keyboard into the USB port on your Motorola XOOM Android tablet? You can do that… but don’t expect the peripheral to work… at least not without making a few tweaks. Fortunately members of the SlateDroid community have figured out just how to tweak the tablet so that you can enable USB host functionality to read USB flash drives or use other peripherals.

You’ll need an OTG cable, the Android software developer tools, and the nerve to root and muck with your $800 tablet’s file system to get things working.

But the end result is a way to plug in peripherals and expand your device’s storage — which can come in handy since the SD card sot isn’t currently supported on the XOOM tablet.

via Android Central

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5 replies on “Motorola XOOM tablet hacked to support USB host capabilities”

  1. Been trying to use a USB microphone. If I apply this will dvice be able to host a mic….and record its input?
    Thanks you guys are doing really cool things here

  2. Pretty sad that the viewsonic gtablet has tegra 2 and usb host out of the box for so much cheaper. too bad they saddled it with a gimpy skin. They could really have moved some units.

  3. Since “built-in USB” and “SD card reader” are high on the “Why not an iPod?” list, having them there physically but de facto broken (for normal users) is a sick joke, bad design, deceitful marketing, unfulfilled promise, and an insult to the designers who were smart enough to include them.

    A pox on Motorola.

    timothy

    1. The USB host controller is there but ARM devices in general aren’t usually intended to function as USB host by default. Most can’t even provide standard USB power unless they are given a standard USB 2.0 port.

      So that’s actually normal, since most ARM devices function as peripherals.

      It’s just a little strange, not unheard of though, that the system needs to be rooted, normally the USB OTG cable should suffice. But it’s also strange they haven’t enabled the card reader yet either…

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