External USB drive support?

[KennX]

Hey there iPhone hacking geniuses...

How difficult would it be to put together a USB driver for the iPhone such that I could hook it up to an external USB drive and browse the contents of it (using Terminal or a File Browser when implemented)? I was just thinking that it would be sweet to be able to hook my WD Passport drive to the iPhone and watch movies from it while on a long plane or car trip.

Feasible? I don't know but thought I'd ask in case anyone wanted to look into it.

Take care,

-KennX

[suzuran]

As I understand it, USB devices are either hosts or peripherals and that cannot be changed. Peripherals cannot talk to other peripherals, so that would prevent the iPhone USB port from being used that direction.

[thecompkid]

...unless the iPhone supports USB On-The-Go like most iPods. If a future iPhone firmware upgrade introduces support for the iPod Camera Connector then it's very possible that we will be able to hack together a USB driver. Otherwise, without USB OTG, it's not physically possible.

[suzuran]

That is interesting, I did not know this device existed. The host/device status is set by the controlling software, not the physical interface (For example, Linux can be built either way by compile-time options) but I assumed the iPhone USB port was always a device. This thing obviously includes some flag that causes the iPod software to do host-mode. What we could do with it depends on how much control we can get over the USB port from userland software.

USB access would be very nice, I had plans of plugging in a NMEA GPS via the USB port and using the iPhone as a VFR GPS like I can do with my Palm.

[Girl.luvzer.mac]

From this site http://jima4media.wiki.zoho.com/iPhone-Contents.html , it seems like the iphone has the capability... Anyone want to help with the driver development etc. or point me in the right direction as far as some n00b how-to s for this sort of thing?

[thecompkid]

From this site http://jima4media.wiki.zoho.com/iPhone-Contents.html , it seems like the iphone has the capability... Anyone want to help with the driver development etc. or point me in the right direction as far as some n00b how-to s for this sort of thing?

You have to realize, though, that although the chip that the iPhone runs on may be spec'd to have the OTG support, Apple's specific version of the chip may have it hardware disabled, or the pins may not be connected. I'm yet to see any solid proof that the iPhone has OTG support, and, most importantly, that the pins in the dock connector are properly wired as such. I wouldn't doubt that it's there somewhere, as it would make a good advanced accessory interface, but we need that proof first in order to move forward.