[paulccpaul]

I was thinking about this and first of all does anyone know of a device that acts as a usb host that has simple file transferring capabilities (something not like the archos audio/video player with usb host) just a device that is a hard drive with a usb host chip, some small amount of memory for a small OS with file transfer capabilities and ability to sync an ipod/camera etc? If it exists great, if not... I was thinking maybe of working on one. Get a usb host chip, IO chip, low resolution display, write a small BIOS with the basic file transfer abilities and let it hook up to any drive you want it to. I'm excited about this, it could be my elec. engineering project ... but if it already exists I would be happy to just have something like that

[mduell]

The iPod's USB port supports the OTG supplement (for the camera connector), so you don't even need a USB host device. All you really need is software on the iPod (and an external drive).

[icruise]

I assume you mean that you want to be able to add or remove music from an iPod/iPhone using just an external hard drive? If that's the case, it would more difficult than simply transferring the files to the iPod's hard disk. You'd also have to be able to add them to the iPod's music partition using the proper naming conventions and add entries to the iPod's library files (or whatever it is that it uses to keep track of things like play counts). You also have to keep in mind that it would likely screw up syncing with iTunes on a computer, since iTunes expects to be the only one adding songs to an iPod (at least until they start actually allowing you to download from the iTunes Wifi Music Store.

It sounds like it might be an interesting project, though.