Apple is terrorizing its customers with forced upon limitations. One of them is that given iOS devices fully support both flash card slots and USB host, none of the iPads or iPhones feature an on-board USB or SD slot.
Camera connection kit 2 in 1 accessory was designed to address this issue.
The Dock connector is covered with transparent cap. It is nice that the connector is raised on some sort of pedestal, which is a good idea if you plan to use a cover skin or a case. Such adapter also come without the connector pedestal, and many Ebay sellers have both pictures in the same listing, so it’s a good idea to contact the seller and clarify what exactly are you buying.
This is basically a card reader and a OTG USB to apple dock converter. It has a tiny switch, which selects mode from card reader to USB host, so don’t forget to switch it for correct operation. So let’s test it out.
USB keyboard doesn’t work, USB thumb drives and USB HDDs do not work even with external power, phones in Mass Storage mode do not work either. The device pops out errors at random.
The only thing that works is the card reader.
The imported images are located in /var/mobile/media/dcim/100IMPRT
Keep in mind, that the drives must be either FAT32 or HFS formatted, and they must have a DCIM folder in the root of the device. That is the only way the iPad will read pictures
and movies. Apple limitation.
Jailbroken devices can read and write to the media. Mounting point is /private/var/mnt/mount1/
PS: The funny thing is – after you import the files, the iPad offers to delete them. That means it have write access to the card. However, there’s no official (non-jailbreak) way to write or copy anything from the iOS device to the external storage. Another stupid Apple limitation.