Hi there,

today I had a bad idea - I mean really bad
My nephew made me a present yesterday (he is seven years old). He gave me new USB-Microscope ( a simple one from a discounter, but hey... it's my nephew and even if he brings along a dead mouse, I'd be happy). Since I had booted up Linux at the time he arrived, I plugged it in to see if it's got recognized. Well, it was but I couldn't get it to work. After some research later that evening I found out that no driver for this device exists.
Today it came again into my mind and the idea was born: write a Linux device driver for it.
So this is not one but two new things for me.
The first is debugging a device driver under Windows. This driver came with the microscope.
The second is writing the driver under Linux.
I have a book for the latter and of course I did (and will do again, and again...) a Google search for the first, but I'd like to ask if someone did something like that before and is willing to share some knowledge or can recommend special reading.
I'm really thankful for any help.
If my progress is noteworthy, I'll blog about it (it's not a threat :devil

Best regards
darkelf


edit: @moderators
Please move this thread to a more appropriate place. It has only little to do with Linux RCE (more Linux coding), but a lot with Win RCE. Thank you.

Hi Darkelf,

Watcha mean by "it got recognized"? If you don't have the usermode Linux viewing software, aren't you're still screwed even if you did write a linux USB driver?

I notice that some USB microscopes offer Linux driver downloads which refer to a generic class for USB/UVC drivers.
http://www.ideasonboard.org/uvc/

In any case, re Win driver reversing, good old Softice/WinDbg/IDA is the way in, that and knowledge of driver structure, i.e.

http://www.woodmann.com/forum/showthread.php?14561-Had-to-say&p=91470#post91470

You might also try IrpTracker

http://www.osronline.com/article.cfm?article=199

and a damn good API monitor to get an overall feeling of how the Mic. software operates.

Cheers,
Kayaker

Hi Kayaker,

first of all, thanks a lot for the hints and links.
By "it got recognized" I mean that I got a vendorID:deviceID via lsusb.
When I then do a "lsusb -vd vID:dID" I see that the device really got fully recognized. It spits out all the information.
I'm not screwed without the viewing software, because the USB microscope is nothing more than a webcam, just with different lenses, so every webcam viewer will do. Even VLC can do this (I just have to chose /dev/video0 as input device).
Getting all the information needed for porting the driver seems to be way less complicated then I thought at first.
I found a couple of really cool links to articles on exactly that topic:

http://www.jespersaur.com/drupal/book/export/html/21
http://www.quietearth.us/articles/2006/10/16/USB-Snoop-in-linux
http://www.reactivated.net/weblog-content/20050806-reverse-0.2.txt

There are even scripts out there that create a working driver stub from usbsnoop's output.

So, it should be a doable task
I'll keep you informed.

Best regards
darkelf

Now that I've seen these USB microscopes, I think I want one, they look really cool

Better get it with the "watertight bag" so you can take it on your voyages.

Regards,

kewl stuff never even imagined there were some Microscopes that operate by plugging into a usb port

i can even find a DIY oooheshbee microscope using toothpick

btw veho seems to offer a linux driver it is a .ko for fedora (i assumed all things linux must contain source and downloaded it to find just a ko )

actually looking around i see someone using the microsoft sdk sample amcap in directshow (graph filter) as a software for capturing the micro stuff

and looks like amcap is purely usermode only no drivers at all

Yeah, those gadgets are really cool
This one is mine:

http://www.traveler-service.de/popups/usb-mikroskop_uk_popup/

At the moment I feel like a little boy (even more than I do normally) and I have a lot of fun playing with it.

@blabberer
unfortunately the microscope I got seems to be the only one that is not an UVC device and therefore doesn't work with the existing USB/UVC drivers. But hey... that's the challenge after all and as I said, right now I have lots of fun

Best regards
darkelf

DarkElf, welcome to my domain!

Step 1, grab a tool from sourceforge called SniffUSB from windows. It will generate a dump file of the USB communications that go on when the device is plugged in, and instantiated.

There is a perl script that converts this output file into a C program to do that instantiation under Linux. It won't be perfect, but it's a GREAT start.

(This will be a user mode program that uses libUSB. But once you have that going, you can move it over to the kernel. I did this with a USB dongle).