C-R-M: USB data/packet monitor ?

Sep 06, 2007 4 Replies

Anyone know of a relatively cheap / easy way to intercept USB packets send from one device to another ? I want to hack some software that used to go to a specific FTDI motor controller box so that I can get it to work with mine. So basically my "black box" would emulate the other black box.



I guess I need something like a "USB Monitor" ? If I have to spend more than



50 to 100 bucks for this side of it the project really won't be worth it me.

Thanks for any ideas!



JCD


Hi We have one at work, but it was real money in the $500 - $750 range if I remember right. I wanted to reverse engineer the protocol for a cheap webcam, but they would not lend it to me... I looked around a little bit for a cheap alternative but didn't find one. If you hear of something good, please post it here!

Good Luck, Bob

Hey Bob. I found this on the net:

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downloaded the trial version and have barely looked at it, but it might be worth a glance for ya. Regards - JCD

The easiest way is to hack into the driver layer on your operating system if you have access to the PC. There are several packages out there, but they are not much cheaper than hardware solutions. If you are on Linux, you can go directly into the USB drivers and add some logging code though.

Also, there are several software solutions for running USB 1.1 on Atmel chips. If you speak Atmel Machine Code, you can modify those to only lurk and log instead of pretending to be a USB device. That would cost you around $10 in hardware...

I don't have firsthand experience with this but it is my understanding that some linux driver authors use vmware to reverse engineer usb devices -- the manufacturer's driver runs inside an instance of windows in vmware and operates the usb device while the linux host sniffs usb traffic.

-chris.

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