Want to plug a flash drive, mouse, or keyboard into the USB port on your Motorola XOOM Android tablet? You can do that… but don’t expect the peripheral to work… at least not without making a few tweaks. Fortunately members of the SlateDroid community have figured out just how to tweak the tablet so that you can enable USB host functionality to read USB flash drives or use other peripherals.

You’ll need an OTG cable, the Android software developer tools, and the nerve to root and muck with your $800 tablet’s file system to get things working.

But the end result is a way to plug in peripherals and expand your device’s storage — which can come in handy since the SD card sot isn’t currently supported on the XOOM tablet.