usb

651 Articles

Rust Drives A Linux USB Device

June 26, 2025 by 13 Comments

In theory, writing a Linux device driver shouldn’t be that hard, but it is harder than it looks. However, using libusb, you can easily deal with USB devices from user space, which, for many purposes, is fine.  [Crescentrose] didn’t know anything about writing user-space USB drivers until they wrote one and documented it for us. Oh, the code is in Rust, for which there aren’t as many examples.

The device in question was a USB hub with some extra lights and gadgets. So the real issue, it seems to us, wasn’t the code, but figuring out the protocol and the USB stack. The post covers that, too, explaining configurations, interfaces, and endpoints.

There are other ancillary topics, too, like setting up udev. This lets you load things when a USB device (or something else) plugs in.

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Wireless USB Autopsy

May 7, 2025 by 22 Comments

It might seem strange to people like us, but normal people hate wires. Really hate wires. A lot. So it makes sense that with so many wireless technologies, there should be a way to do USB over wireless. There is, but it really hasn’t caught on outside of a few small pockets. [Cameron Kaiser] wants to share why he thinks the technology never went anywhere.

Wireless USB makes sense. We have high-speed wireless networking. Bluetooth doesn’t handle that kind of speed, but forms a workable wireless network. In the background, of course, would be competing standards.

Texas Instruments and Intel wanted to use multiband orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (MB-OFDM) to carry data using a large number of subcarriers. Motorola (later Freescale), HP, and others were backing the competing direct sequence ultra-wideband or DS-UWB. Attempts to come up with a common system degenerated.

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Prusa Mini with endoscope nozzle cam and pip preview

Prusa Mini Nozzle Cam On The Cheap

May 2, 2025 by 2 Comments

Let me throw in a curveball—watching your 3D print fail in real-time is so much more satisfying when you have a crisp, up-close view of the nozzle drama. That’s exactly what [Mellow Labs] delivers in his latest DIY video: transforming a generic HD endoscope camera into a purpose-built nozzle cam for the Prusa Mini. The hack blends absurd simplicity with delightful nerdy precision, and comes with a full walkthrough, a printable mount, and just enough bad advice to make it interesting. It’s a must-see for any maker who enjoys solder fumes with their spaghetti monsters.

What makes this build uniquely brilliant is the repurposing of a common USB endoscope camera—a tool normally reserved for inspecting pipes or internal combustion engines. Instead, it’s now spying on molten plastic. The camera gets ripped from its aluminium tomb, upgraded with custom-salvaged LEDs (harvested straight from a dismembered bulb), then wrapped in makeshift heat-shrink and mounted on a custom PETG bracket. [Mellow Labs] even micro-solders in a custom connector just so the camera can be detached post-print. The mount is parametric, thanks to a community contribution.

This is exactly the sort of hacking to love—clever, scrappy, informative, and full of personality. For the tinkerers among us who like their camera mounts hot and their resistor math hotter, this build is a weekend well spent.

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Multifunctional USB controlled PCB on blue background

How A Tiny Relay Became A USB Swiss Army Knife

April 5, 2025 by 17 Comments

Meet the little board that could: [alcor6502]’s tiny USB relay controller, now evolved into a multifunction marvel. Originally built as a simple USB relay to probe the boundaries of JLCPCB’s production chops, it has become a compact utility belt for any hacker’s desk drawer. Not only has [alcor6502] actually built the thing, he even provided instructions. If you happened to be at Hackaday in Berlin, you now might even own one, as he handed out twenty of them during his visit. If not, read on and build it yourself.

This thing is not just a relay, and that is what makes it special. Depending on a few solder bridges and minimal components, it shape-shifts into six different tools: a fan controller (both 3- and 4-pin!), servo driver, UART interface, and of course, the classic relay. It even swaps out a crystal oscillator for USB self-sync using STM32F042‘s internal RC – no quartz, less cost, same precision. A dual-purpose BOOT0 button lets you flash firmware and toggle outputs, depending on timing. Clever reuse, just like our mothers taught us.

It’s the kind of design that makes you want to tinker again. Fewer parts. More function. And that little smile when it just works. If this kind of clever compactness excites you too, read [alcor6502]’s build log and instructions here.

Piggyback Board Brings Touch Sensing To USB Soldering Iron

March 5, 2025 by 20 Comments

The current generation of USB-powered soldering irons have a lot going for them, chief among them being portability and automatic start and stop. But an iron that turns off in the middle of soldering a joint is a problem, one that this capacitive-touch replacement control module aims to fix.

The iron in question is an SJ1 from Awgem, which [DoganM95] picked up on Ali Express. It seems well-built, with a sturdy aluminum handle, a nice OLED display, and fast heat-up and cool-down. The problem is that the iron is triggered by motion, so if you leave it still for more than a second or two, such as when you’re soldering a big joint, it turns itself off. To fix that,[DoganM95] designed a piggyback board for the OEM controller with a TTP223 capacitive touch sensor. The board is carefully shaped to allow clearance for the existing PCB components and the heater cartridge terminals, and has castellated connections so it can connect to pads on the main board. You have to remove one MOSFET from the main board, but that’s about it for modifications. A nickel strip makes contact with the inside of the iron’s shell, turning it into the sensor plate for the TTP223.

[DoganM95] says that the BA6 variant of the chip is the one you want, as others have a 10-second timeout, which would defeat the purpose of the mod. It’s a very nice bit of design work, and we especially like how the mod board nests so nicely onto the OEM controller. It reminds us a little of those Quansheng handy-talkie all-band mods.

Linux Fu: USB Everywhere

February 27, 2025 by 20 Comments

It is a common problem: I have a USB device on a computer out in the shop, and I want to use it from the comfort of my office. What to do? Well, you could remote desktop into the distant machine. But, honestly, I always find any remote desktop more than ssh clunky and somewhat undesirable. Fortunately, Linux can do virtually anything if you only know how to do it. So, this time, I’ll show you how to transport a USB device over your network. Of course, I have a network that reaches out to the shop. It should be a simple matter to tell my desktop machine that one of its USB devices lives across the network. Well, it wasn’t that simple, but it is doable.

The Tools

The whole thing involves a program called usbip. That should be the end of it, but of course, it isn’t. In order for this to work, both machines on the network will need some kernel modules and a daemon on the server: the machine with the USB devices to share.

You may be able to install usbip from your package manager. On Ubuntu, it is in the linux-tools-common package, so a simple apt-get might give you everything you need. I wasn’t so lucky. Continue reading “Linux Fu: USB Everywhere” →

Adding USB-C (Kinda) To A PowerMac G4

February 15, 2025 by 10 Comments

For those who’ve never bitten the Apple, the PowerMac G4 was a blue-tinted desktop Macintosh offered from 1999 to 2004. At the time, the machines were plenty fast — being advertised as the first “personal supercomputer” when they hit the market. But Father Time is particularly harsh on silicon, so they’re properly archaic by modern standards.

As such, the rear panel of one of these machines is hardly where you’d expect to run into a functional USB-C port. But thanks to the efforts of [Dandu], old has officially met new. Critics will note that it’s not real USB-C, and instead uses USB 2.0 with the more modern connector. That’s true, but considering how many commercial devices we run into that are still using the same trick, we’ll give it a pass.

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