[CentOS] Reverse engineering USB devices

Fri Apr 30 15:49:34 UTC 2010
Eero Volotinen <eero.volotinen at iki.fi>

2010/4/30 Stephen Harris <lists at spuddy.org>:
> I'm pretty sure this is the wrong list, but maybe some clever people
> here can redirect me...
>
> I have a "RCA RS2100 Bookshelf Audio System"
>  http://www.woot.com/blog/viewentry.aspx?id=2744
> This is radio/CD/mp3 player... PLUS it can stream audio wirelessly.
> You plug a USB device into your PC and you can remote control what gets
> played from the RS2100 remote control ("Wireless Musiclink").
>
> BUT only with Windows Media Center.
>
> When I plugged the device in it appears to look like 3 devices; a HID,
> an audio device and something else I can't remember (I'm not at that
> machine at the moment).  My feeling is that the HID is used to inject
> commands from the RS2100 (eg "play track <x>"), the audio device is for
> streaming and the third device is feedback for the remote display.
>
> The question I have... how can I reverse engineer the protocol used so
> that I can make this work on my CentOS machine?  (I don't want to run
> a Windows instance just for remote audio!).  Any hints, tips, pointers etc
> much appreciated.

try usbsnoop or similar tools.

--
Eero,
RHCE