developing a special device communication app that connects through USB port on Android

Question

I found the USB docs for Android and from there it seems as if one could write a communication program on an Android phone that works exactly like on a PC.

I have a normal USB-cable that normally connects between a PC and an external device. On one end it is a normal USB on the other end it has a special plug for the device.

If I get an USB female-female adapter I could connect my normal Android phone cable USB end to my device USB cable and so basically plug in my special USB cable into the Android phone.

Does anyone have experience doing USB communcation programming on Android - basically copying normal PC USB functionality? All I would have to do is sent and receive text strings over the USB port - just like on a PC.

Is this possible or is the USB port programming on Android limited in any way and not really identical to USB programming on a PC? eg. power supply through USB or anything else?

ps on the PC I need to have a FTDI driver installed to work with the external device.

Many thanks

UPDATE: it seems that starting with Android 3.1 it is possible to do this - however, if I understand htis correctly, Android 3.1 runs only on tablet Android devices - I might be wrong with this - compared to Apple this all this pretty confusing (however, with Apple iPhone it will never work! ;)

Answer 1

Yes, Android supports USB host on 3.1 and newer, so you can connect USB devices directly to an Android device using a converter cable. Android 4.0 brings this feature to handset devices.