Read data from an Android USB attachment

Is there anyway to read data 开发者_开发知识库from an attachment through the USB port on an Android device? In particular, an EKG. Most the work can be done by the hardware of the device to simplify the output to a single number, a voltage reading. If its not possible, what about modifying an accessory that can already communicate with an android device? Thinking of devices that attach to android phones, what about sending the data as an audio signal to be read as the microphone from a headset and then analyzing the audio signal to convert it to a number that can be used to display a value.

Any ideas on how to make this work?

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The Android handset can't be used as a "USB Host" (it's in the google android wishlist as a bug/enhancement request). That's what you'd need to connect regular USB devices like your EKG monitor and memory card readers, etc. to it. I wish it could do this too and star'd that enhancement to vote for it...

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I'm not sure if this will work for you, but here's something I did recently for a project where I needed a smartphone to communicate with a host PC.

I used ADB on the PC to do port forwarding and then I used sockets to do the communication. Server socket on the phone, client on the PC. I can give you more details if you want.

Of course, the clear requirement here is to be able to install and execute code on the "device" which I don't think is applicable to your problem. Other than that, I found no other way to communicate over a USB connection through Android.