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Frode Austvik edited this page Apr 3, 2012 · 6 revisions

All USB devices have, among other things, two 16-bit identifier numbers, one that identifies the vendor, and another that identifies the product. The vendor ID is assigned by the USB IF, while the product ID is assigned by the vendor owning the vendor ID.

These numbers can be used to identify the device, and is especially useful if the device needs custom software, which can then simply look for connected devices with known IDs. There are other identifier numbers that are used to recognize standard device classes, e.g. keyboards, with defined protocols - so that a generic driver can be used - but those IDs aren't as interesting for our purposes here.

Since the TEMPer devices are USB devices, they have vendor and product IDs, which we can use to recognize the type of device, and how to talk with it. Most of them are HID class devices (like keyboards), but some instead use a USB-to-serial converter.

However, RDing usually reuses these IDs for several different devices - e.g. recent TEMPer and TEMPer2 share one, and several older types share another. Luckily, they seem to stick to a single main interface type (HID or serial) for each ID set, though I suspect that is caused more by the hardware they use than by any concious choice they've made.

USB devices can also provide custom strings of text; two of the most common are the manufacturer string and product string, that usually hold the names of the device manufacturer and the name of the device. These are both selected freely by the manufacturer; in our case the former is often "RDing" while the latter depends on the device. I've often based the type names on this product string, but not always - as RDing tends to reuse the same strings, and haven't always set it to something relevant.

This page lists the USB vendor and product IDs of the known TEMPer devices, with links to pages that give some information on the known device subtypes that use that ID. Note that not all known devices have known USB IDs, but all supported devices (and some unsupported ones) are included.

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