USB human interface devices with Linux

I want to use a plastic drum pad to trigger sounds on the computer. It is connected by USB. It is not supported by Mac OS X by default. It is not a MIDI device.

Device connection

The following appears in /var/log/messages

Dec  4 21:11:13 colourbox kernel: usb 1-2: new low speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 3
Dec  4 21:11:13 colourbox kernel: usb 1-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Dec  4 21:11:13 colourbox kernel: usbcore: registered new driver hiddev
Dec  4 21:11:13 colourbox kernel: hiddev96: USB HID v1.00 Device [HID 1941:8021] on usb-0000:00:14.2-2
Dec  4 21:11:13 colourbox kernel: usbcore: registered new driver usbhid
Dec  4 21:11:13 colourbox kernel: drivers/usb/input/hid-core.c: v2.6:USB HID core driver

The following device node appears

# ls -al /dev/usb/hiddev0 
crw-rw---- 1 root root 180, 96 2008-12-04 21:53 /dev/usb/hiddev0

See also

• [1]