Droid Connects To Printers And More Via USB Hack
Mike Kershaw from Kismet and Mike Baker of OpenWRT authored the USB hack. The detailed instructions are on Chris Paget's blog.
The basic concept is to build one connector using three cables: a micro USB cable, the Droid's car-charging cable and a USB extender cable. Splicing those together following Paget's detailed instructions will result in a cable that will allow the phone to be plugged into any USB hardware that runs on Linux.
From the look of things, it's pretty easy to pull off. Once the cables are together, the Droid is powered down, restarted, and the devices work with each other. Of course, if you want to switch from a video camera to a printer, for example, the Droid needs to be turned off and restarted. And, notes Paget, the standard Android kernel doesn't have much driver support for USB peripherals; for instance, he could not mount a USB key.
Still, it's a quick and easy way to increase the versatility of the Droid by leaps and bounds. As Paget wrote: "Expect to see a whole new generation of Android hackery to start soon."