I'm using Ruby 1.8 and linux (Ubuntu and SLAX), and i need to write a script in ruby which finds out if some specific usb device is connected to the system and on which USB port (0,1,2, etc). It was done before with the help of HAL (hal-find-by-capability --capability serial), but now i can't use this approach. I was trying to read /var/log/messages file trying to find the number of the usb port, but it appears that this number may not be written in some systems. Other thing i tried is to check /dev folder and search for ttyUSB# file, but it doesn't appear on some system when new device connects to USB.
I would appreciate any ideas how to do this.
lsusb is a linux command for displaying your usb hubs and listing the devices that are connected to them. In ruby I believe you'd be able to do something like this:
ls_results = `lsusb`
You should be able to parse that for whatever device you're looking for.
I'm sorry that I couldn't provide you an ruby sample. I had the same problem in C / C++ (QT). You can find my snippet here:
http://www.known-issues.net/cpp/how-to-detect-if-dev-is-a-usb-device.html
You have libusb ruby bindings which allow to control usb devices.
Related
I'm coding C/C++ on an Arduino to communicate with a Node.js server over the serial port using the serialport Node.js package. I have written this code on a Mac. In my Node.js code I need to reference the USB port, for reference mine is:
/dev/tty.wchusbserialfa14
On a Mac, to get a list of ports in a format that will work in my Node.js code I use the terminal and this command:
ls /dev/{tty,cu}.*
I can not find the equivalent for a Windows computer. Could someone please tell me what the command is to list the ports on a Windows machine, in a format that I can use in my Node.js.
Thanks!
Edit: Added more context about use of ports
You are searching not USB ports, but serial ports. Because you are using USB to serial converter that build in Arduino, and looking about serial ports. How to get list of serial ports in windows you can find here or in google.
Excuse me, can't comment yet.
Thanks for your help! The following command gave me a list of ports in a format that will work in my Node.js code:
chgport
I'm looking at tutorials no how to read from the playstation sixaxis controller over usb and it seems the in general you should look for a file object in /dev/input. I'm developing on OSX and this directory doesn't seem to exist and i cant fine any information on an equivalent. Does OSX have a similar mechanism for reading from usb devices?
You are trying to access a Human Interface Device (HID) on macOS. For more details on how to access HID data on macOS, begin here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/28405248/8258079
I'd like to modify a USB driver to send and receive USB data over a network.
Take for example, an iMac and a PC. I have an iPod plugged in to my PC (in NY). I want my iMac (in LA) to recognize the iPod as plugged in to a local USB port and be able to communicate with the iPod.
Forget my qualifications, or lack thereof (I have background in web, iOS apps, I've toyed with Java and C).
Where can I get source code for a USB driver for Windows that I can modify? Mac OS?
Any tips or pointers towards accomplishing my goal would be appreciated as well.
It looks like folks are coming up with something close to what you want. If you do decide to roll your own, the USB driver source you asked for is libusb.
On the Mac OS X end, drivers are built up in a stack. What you want to do should be relatively simple (nothing is really simple in kernel land). You need to create a driver that can communicate over ethernet with the PC and looks like a USB device to the driver matching software. Then everything else will happen automatically.
The source code is available for Apple's USB stack. You should also read about the IOKit API and IOKit device driver guidelines and IOKit fundamentals.
Oh yes and you say you have toyed with Java and C. To write device drivers on OS X, you'll need to learn some C++.
I suggest you to go see USBIP project. This is available on Linux and Windows, but not clear for MAC. If you can get a VHCI-Controller driver installed for MAC, we can kick start USBIP for MAC.
Sounds quite like this product, a bit unsure if theirs works over wide-area networks though.
I have a general idea of how I'd go about it, but not any specifics. Basically, I'd use the platform's driver development kit to write a USB device emulator on the client machine. I'd then add a virtual device to that system called "Networked USB Host", or something similar that maintains an open port to listen for communication from the server and passes it on to your virtual USB device. IIRC, the Windows DDK comes with a USB simulation framework that might be able to help you with this.
On the server, you'd have to hook into the USB subsystem to send raw USB packets to the client machine. libpcap and wireshark have USB capturing facilities for that, but I'm not sure if this works with winpcap and the Windows version of wireshark as well.
EDIT: Look at this for cross-platform USB capture alternatives.
You can buy OSR USB learning kit: https://www.osronline.com/custom.cfm?name=index_fullframeset.cfm&pageURL=https://www.osronline.com/store/index.cfm
This is actually small USB device with known interface. Windows Driver Kit (WDK) contains sample KMDF driver for this device: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/driver/wdk/
This is good starting point to learn Windows Drivers development, and USB drivers development specifically. However, it is still far away from your problem solution.
Can't you use some sort of Remote Desktop?
What is the best way to discover what USB drives are connected, where they are mounted, and their unique details like Serial number, PID and which USB Hub port they are connected to? Something similar to what USBlyzer does for Windows but programmatically.
You can use Terminal and execute:
system_profiler SPUSBDataType
It will show all connected USB devices, with detailed information.
The Finder has an "about this mac" option under the Apple at the upper left. Ask for more info and follow the devices===> USB tree to find your answers. In a shell or another executing module, I have no idea how to retrieve this info.
USB Prober is the most useful tool. It can be found at /Developer/Applications/Utilities/USB Prober.
I'm not an expert of I/O on Mac OS X, but I've heard of I/O Kit, which may be a good starting point.
How does one go about creating a virtual CD driver on Mac OS X programatically?
I can't find any relevant Cocoa APIs or any pure C BSD solutions.
Any help or information is appreciated.
You would need to use the I/O Kit framework to develop your own device driver that would emulate a virtual CD drive. Here are some links to the relevant APIs to get you started.
I/O Kit Fundamentals
I/O Kit Device Driver Guidelines
Kernel Extension Programming Topics
There are several different answers people have proposed here. The issue at hand is what are you trying to accomplish. If you really want to emulate a CD ROM (down to the commandset) you will need to write a device driver. If your goal is merely to emulate a block device with contents similiar to a CD you can create a disk image using disk utility and let the builtin disk image driver handle it for you.
MacFUSE is useful if you want to present some sort of custom filesystem functionality, but if what you are looking for is something that has the same semantics as an optical disc (whether that is and block or command set level) it is the wrong tool.
If you're simply looking to mount an ISO or something then it's done through the Disk Utility, simply drag it into the side-bar and then select it and choose mount.
If you want to do it from code you can issue the hdiutil command, as shown here. I'm not sure if there's an API call to do it, but getting that command to do the work is quite painless.
The simplest way to mount a custom volume is MacFUSE. It handles the IOKit details for you and lets you write the implementation in user space. However, I don’t think you can make a MacFUSE “look like” a CD; you’d have to modify FUSE to achieve that.
I had a nosey around DAEMON Tools for Mac's driver:
/Library/Extensions/DAEMONToolsVirtualSCSIBus.kext/Contents/MacOS/DAEMONToolsVirtualSCSIBus
I disassembled the binary using Hopper and discovered they are using
IOSCSIProtocolServices.