[mdlug] Capturing USB events for reverse-engineering?

[Mark Thuemmel]

On 09/13/2013 03:28 PM, David McMillan wrote:
>
> So, I've got this cheap USB microscope that both Windows and Linux
> recognize as a standard webcam. But it has a button on it to trigger
> taking images, which only works with the Windows-only proprietary
> software that came with the 'scope. And it occurred to me that detecting
> this button push under Linux and using it to trigger a capture probably
> shouldn't be too hard (this unit is too cheap for the mfgr to have spent
> much effort on anti-hacking measures). But then I realized -- I have no
> idea how one goes about this kind of thing. It's just never come up in
> my "Linux life" before.
> So... anyone know a good "idiot's guide" place to start?

do a lsusb from a terminal prompt and look for the ID of your device. 
If you don't know which one it is, try it unplugged and then plugged in 
and see what appears.  Looks like this:

Bus 007 Device 002: ID 045e:0040 Microsoft Corp. Wheel Mouse Optical

Then Google the numbers with the colon (045e:0040 in this case) that and 
see if you can identify it.



I wonder if http://www.lirc.org/ could read it and act on button....