Basic example, if I bought a chipset with a light socket and bulb soldered to the chipset; then put a USB cable with the mini-USB plug on the end to get plugged into the android phone. Can I write a Java application to turn on/off the light, get the status of the light(on/off) and maybe power a super-small led/bulb with power from the phone itself?
Any insight at all would be greatly appreciated. Thank you
If you need to do it in Java, I guess the answer is no. The SDK doesn't have that kind of low level functionalities.
In my short experience with Android, the only hack I did was connecting a Bluetooth keyboard and it was on a rooted phone running scripts in a console.
You can always hack the code, build your own android and provide that functionalities to an Android app, but I don't know if you want to go down that road.
This is pretty new afaik
Sounds like there may be a java API for this sparkfun IOIO. Another option could be if you got some sort of board with wifi, you could always run a mini server that controls the led/lights through a web interface
http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/10/sparkfun-intros-ioio-for-android-a-hack-free-breakout-box-to-ge/
edit 2015: for anyone seeing this now USB-OTG is becoming pretty common on newer android devices and can be used as Host or Device as the question asks
Yes, you can.
Pick a usb device similar to things made by Phidget
Then take a look at how to put the phone in host mode
