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I would like to identify a USB keyboard uniquely(something equivalent to unique mac-id for the Ethernet cards) on a computer. Does the USB HID profile has a support for such identification ? If so what is the field called ? I understand that VID and PID uniquely identify a make of keyboard from a vendor, but I am looking forward to identifying each keyboard separately.

PS : Asking the question on Elex SE, since I would have to implement this USB profile on AVR32.

Chris Stratton
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Bleamer
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  • Would `bus:deviceNumber` be an option? To my knowledge the port enumeration is static across reboots. – jippie May 14 '13 at 18:59
  • @jippie you never know if the enumeration order changes during a reboot. Sometimes a device will enumerate as the first device, and sometimes it will be the second or third. – Passerby May 15 '13 at 01:57
  • @Passerby The device number will change, but every USB port on the bus is uniquely identifable. A port on a hub has always the same number. – jippie May 15 '13 at 05:23
  • @PeterMotensen as been pointed out to you countless times in the past, making such utterly petty edits to ancient questions is anything but beneficial. Further, your deletion removed information which as **absolutely critical** to the question; without that it would appear to refer to an off-the-shelf keyboard, a very different situation than the *custom* keyboard project the question is actually about. – Chris Stratton Jun 15 '19 at 01:49

2 Answers2

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I think it will vary by manufacturer. There is a serial number field, but many don't fill it in. USBDeview is a free app that will let you peek at all the fields for all the installed devices (http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/usb_devices_view.html). A screen capture for an HID device on my system is attached below. Install it (actually, no need to even unzip, it runs as an executable), and see if there's a unique ID in the devices you're talking about.

enter image description here

Scott Seidman
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  • Unable to upvote but this thing definitely is in the direction to the answer. Thank you. – Bleamer May 14 '13 at 14:51
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    Verified my HP keyboard and Logitech mouse both have '0' as serial number. VendorID:productID is unique per product. On Linux the 'lsusb' command reveals the same information. – jippie May 14 '13 at 18:56
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    VendorID and ProductID SHOULD be unique per product, but everything is sort of up in the air for products without the official USB logo. I can easily see the same PID being used for products within a small company, or different HID devices that use the same hacker-board. Shouldn't be that way, but it might be. Big companies probably pay by the rules. – Scott Seidman May 14 '13 at 19:09
  • Take the md5 or sha of all (or a subset of) the static properties listed above. If it has a serial number it will be unique. If not, the last plug/unplug date + the other info will tend to make it unique, or at least a close approximation. – walrii May 15 '13 at 00:51
  • @walrii a hash that includes a constantly changing date (or port number or would be useless, as it will never be the same again. You couldn't tell 1 device from 1000 devices, because they would change on every boot. – Passerby May 15 '13 at 01:47
  • @Passerby That's why I specified the *static* properties in the comment :) – walrii May 16 '13 at 00:52
  • @walrii but then you mentioned the last plug/unplug date. – Passerby May 16 '13 at 01:35
  • @Passerby You're right about last plug/unplug. Don't know what I was dreaming of there--definitely not static. – walrii May 16 '13 at 02:21
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The USB Serial Number is what you want. And Atmel has a small datasheet on how to implement it with their usb stack here.

Additionally, any of the user configurable USB descriptors could be used. Assuming you are using the same VID/PID pair, you still have the Device Release Number, Manufacturer String Descriptor (Manufacturer Name), Product String Descriptor (Product name), and the Serial Number Descriptor, all of which go into the basic usb device descriptor that is mandatory for any usb device. They are independent of the usb class (HID, CDC, Proprietary etc), all major OS can read them, and can be as unique as you need them to be.

Passerby
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    He's talking about the host side, I think, for use w/ commercial HID products, and not the device side. That's great info on how to use the unique Atmel ID to serialize. – Scott Seidman May 14 '13 at 23:52
  • But why is that Atmel ID number unique? – Scott Seidman May 15 '13 at 00:04
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    @ScottSeidman some atmel microcontrollers have unique ids, so you don't have to generate them code side. It's just a feature they have. For USB-HID, You can use up to any 10 byte variable to make a serial number. The whitesheet has two options for that. The unique ID pulled from the `Flash_read_sn(pos)` function, which you could replace with your own, or the usb_descriptors.h serial number define. And OP is obviously talking about making a AVR with usb-hid. His device will be a slave, connected to a computer. – Passerby May 15 '13 at 01:45
  • @Passerby are you suggesting putting the Atmel serial number in to HID profile serial number field ? – Bleamer May 15 '13 at 07:46
  • @Bleamer that's a option. But not all amtel devices have a unique serial number. I am simply suggesting to use the serial number field in the usb descriptor. What actual number you use can be arbitrary. – Passerby May 15 '13 at 08:59