How to Make OTG USB Host Cable for Galaxy S2 or Xoom!

For those of you with an Android smartphone or tablet that supports OTG USB mode, which allows you to connect USB peripherals such as your USB flash drive, USB Mouse, USB Keyboard, USB Monitor, and more, you can buy an OTG USB Host cable OR you can make your own.

The idea is pretty simple here actually, you just need a female USB connector (off a USB extension cable) and a micro USB connector.  You connect all the colored wires together.  For example, there’s red, white, black, and green wires.  You just connect red to red, white to white, black to black, and green to green.  There’s also a shielding wire (silver) you can connect which holds your OTG cable together in place (or you don’t have to).

Once that’s done, you just need to short pin 4 and pin 5 on the micro USB connector end.  This will vary depending on which micro USB cable you got it off from but you will most likely have to open up the micro USB connector end to expose the pins.  Simply short the pin 4 and 5 and you should be good to go.

This should work on any OTG-enabled Android devices without rooting such as Galaxy S2 or Motorola Xoom. For others, you may need a custom kernel to make it work.

Here’s my ghetto OTG cable working fine on the Galaxy S2:

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Max Lee

Max Lee is the founder of HighOnAndroid.com. Max makes Android tutorials and review videos for people who want to get high on Android over at his YouTube channel and Korean YouTube channel.