node-hid - Access USB HID devices from node.js

Installation

Prerequisites:

• Mac OS (I use 10.6.8) or Linux (kernel 2.6+) or Windows XP+
• node.js v0.8
• libudev-dev (Linux only)
• git

Compile from source on Linux or OSX

Use npm to execute all installation steps:

npm install

Compile from source on Windows

Use node-gyp to compile the extension.

Please note that Windows support is incomplete and needs some work to pull it to the same level as on Linux and OSX. See issues #10 and #15 in github for discussion. Pull requests to improve Windows support would be welcome.

Test it

In the src/ directory, various JavaScript programs can be found that talk to specific devices in some way. The show-devices.js program can be used to display all HID devices in the system.

How to Use

Load the extension

var HID = require('node-hid');

Get a list of all HID devices in the system:

var devices = HID.devices()

devices will contain an array of objects, one for each HID device available. Of particular interest are the vendorId and productId, as they uniquely identify a device, and the path, which is needed to open a particular device.

Here is some sample output:

HID.devices();
[ { vendorId: 1452,
    productId: 595,
    path: 'USB_05ac_0253_0x100a148e0',
    serialNumber: '',
    manufacturer: 'Apple Inc.',
    product: 'Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad',
    release: 280,
    interface: -1 },
  { vendorId: 1452,
    productId: 595,
    path: 'USB_05ac_0253_0x100a14e20',
    serialNumber: '',
    manufacturer: 'Apple Inc.',
    product: 'Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad',
    release: 280,
    interface: -1 },
<and more>

Opening a device

Before a device can be read from or written to, it must be opened:

var device = new HID.HID(path);

device will contain a handle to the device. The path can be determined by a prior HID.devices() call. If an error occurs opening the device, an exception will be thrown.

Reading from a device

Reading from a device is performed using the read call on a device handle:

device.read(function(error, data) {});

All reading is asynchronous.

Writing to a device

Writing to a device is performed using the write call in a device handle. All writing is synchronous.

device.write([0x00, 0x01, 0x01, 0x05, 0xff, 0xff]);

Support

If you need help, send me an email (hans.huebner@gmail.com)