I'm working with digital scales (see below) that, using a USB A male to USB A male (symmetric) cable can be connected to a PC. It appears as a serial device and starts pouring out bytes which tell you its status (empty, loaded, overloaded + of course the weight of the object on the scale).
For some reason I thought the scales would have an oldschool rs232 plug which I could connect to an Arduino using the MAX232, but of course all devices come with USB these days (or decades actually).
So I was wondering: seeing as the Arduino and the scales are both serial devices, would it be possible to connect the scales and the Arduino directly to communicate between them? Or does there really need to be some USB stuff going on and is using an Arduino USB Host shield the only option?
While writing this I remember the USB cable for the scales is a symmetric one (both USB A male). According to the specs of USB, a USB A port should be a host port, but I doubt it will be possible to plug the Arduino into this port, unless its a USB OTG port I guess?
The scales can be powered using an adapter, 6 AA batteries or USB and is a myweigh PD750 Extreme (no useful information available anywhere, only for its predecessor, the PD750 (no extreme).