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1 UHID - User-space I/O driver support for HID subsystem
2 ========================================================
3
4The HID subsystem needs two kinds of drivers. In this document we call them:
5
6 1. The "HID I/O Driver" is the driver that performs raw data I/O to the
7 low-level device. Internally, they register an hid_ll_driver structure with
8 the HID core. They perform device setup, read raw data from the device and
9 push it into the HID subsystem and they provide a callback so the HID
10 subsystem can send data to the device.
11
12 2. The "HID Device Driver" is the driver that parses HID reports and reacts on
13 them. There are generic drivers like "generic-usb" and "generic-bluetooth"
14 which adhere to the HID specification and provide the standardizes features.
15 But there may be special drivers and quirks for each non-standard device out
16 there. Internally, they use the hid_driver structure.
17
18Historically, the USB stack was the first subsystem to provide an HID I/O
19Driver. However, other standards like Bluetooth have adopted the HID specs and
20may provide HID I/O Drivers, too. The UHID driver allows to implement HID I/O
21Drivers in user-space and feed the data into the kernel HID-subsystem.
22
23This allows user-space to operate on the same level as USB-HID, Bluetooth-HID
24and similar. It does not provide a way to write HID Device Drivers, though. Use
25hidraw for this purpose.
26
27There is an example user-space application in ./samples/uhid/uhid-example.c
28
29The UHID API
30------------
31
32UHID is accessed through a character misc-device. The minor-number is allocated
33dynamically so you need to rely on udev (or similar) to create the device node.
34This is /dev/uhid by default.
35
36If a new device is detected by your HID I/O Driver and you want to register this
37device with the HID subsystem, then you need to open /dev/uhid once for each
38device you want to register. All further communication is done by read()'ing or
39write()'ing "struct uhid_event" objects. Non-blocking operations are supported
40by setting O_NONBLOCK.
41
42struct uhid_event {
43 __u32 type;
44 union {
45 struct uhid_create_req create;
46 struct uhid_data_req data;
47 ...
48 } u;
49};
50
51The "type" field contains the ID of the event. Depending on the ID different
52payloads are sent. You must not split a single event across multiple read()'s or
53multiple write()'s. A single event must always be sent as a whole. Furthermore,
54only a single event can be sent per read() or write(). Pending data is ignored.
55If you want to handle multiple events in a single syscall, then use vectored
56I/O with readv()/writev().
57
58The first thing you should do is sending an UHID_CREATE event. This will
59register the device. UHID will respond with an UHID_START event. You can now
60start sending data to and reading data from UHID. However, unless UHID sends the
61UHID_OPEN event, the internally attached HID Device Driver has no user attached.
62That is, you might put your device asleep unless you receive the UHID_OPEN
63event. If you receive the UHID_OPEN event, you should start I/O. If the last
64user closes the HID device, you will receive an UHID_CLOSE event. This may be
65followed by an UHID_OPEN event again and so on. There is no need to perform
66reference-counting in user-space. That is, you will never receive multiple
67UHID_OPEN events without an UHID_CLOSE event. The HID subsystem performs
68ref-counting for you.
69You may decide to ignore UHID_OPEN/UHID_CLOSE, though. I/O is allowed even
70though the device may have no users.
71
72If you want to send data to the HID subsystem, you send an HID_INPUT event with
73your raw data payload. If the kernel wants to send data to the device, you will
74read an UHID_OUTPUT or UHID_OUTPUT_EV event.
75
76If your device disconnects, you should send an UHID_DESTROY event. This will
77unregister the device. You can now send UHID_CREATE again to register a new
78device.
79If you close() the fd, the device is automatically unregistered and destroyed
80internally.
81
82write()
83-------
84write() allows you to modify the state of the device and feed input data into
85the kernel. The following types are supported: UHID_CREATE, UHID_DESTROY and
86UHID_INPUT. The kernel will parse the event immediately and if the event ID is
87not supported, it will return -EOPNOTSUPP. If the payload is invalid, then
88-EINVAL is returned, otherwise, the amount of data that was read is returned and
89the request was handled successfully.
90
91 UHID_CREATE:
92 This creates the internal HID device. No I/O is possible until you send this
93 event to the kernel. The payload is of type struct uhid_create_req and
94 contains information about your device. You can start I/O now.
95
96 UHID_DESTROY:
97 This destroys the internal HID device. No further I/O will be accepted. There
98 may still be pending messages that you can receive with read() but no further
99 UHID_INPUT events can be sent to the kernel.
100 You can create a new device by sending UHID_CREATE again. There is no need to
101 reopen the character device.
102
103 UHID_INPUT:
104 You must send UHID_CREATE before sending input to the kernel! This event
105 contains a data-payload. This is the raw data that you read from your device.
106 The kernel will parse the HID reports and react on it.
107
108 UHID_FEATURE_ANSWER:
109 If you receive a UHID_FEATURE request you must answer with this request. You
110 must copy the "id" field from the request into the answer. Set the "err" field
111 to 0 if no error occured or to EIO if an I/O error occurred.
112 If "err" is 0 then you should fill the buffer of the answer with the results
113 of the feature request and set "size" correspondingly.
114
115read()
116------
117read() will return a queued ouput report. These output reports can be of type
118UHID_START, UHID_STOP, UHID_OPEN, UHID_CLOSE, UHID_OUTPUT or UHID_OUTPUT_EV. No
119reaction is required to any of them but you should handle them according to your
120needs. Only UHID_OUTPUT and UHID_OUTPUT_EV have payloads.
121
122 UHID_START:
123 This is sent when the HID device is started. Consider this as an answer to
124 UHID_CREATE. This is always the first event that is sent.
125
126 UHID_STOP:
127 This is sent when the HID device is stopped. Consider this as an answer to
128 UHID_DESTROY.
129 If the kernel HID device driver closes the device manually (that is, you
130 didn't send UHID_DESTROY) then you should consider this device closed and send
131 an UHID_DESTROY event. You may want to reregister your device, though. This is
132 always the last message that is sent to you unless you reopen the device with
133 UHID_CREATE.
134
135 UHID_OPEN:
136 This is sent when the HID device is opened. That is, the data that the HID
137 device provides is read by some other process. You may ignore this event but
138 it is useful for power-management. As long as you haven't received this event
139 there is actually no other process that reads your data so there is no need to
140 send UHID_INPUT events to the kernel.
141
142 UHID_CLOSE:
143 This is sent when there are no more processes which read the HID data. It is
144 the counterpart of UHID_OPEN and you may as well ignore this event.
145
146 UHID_OUTPUT:
147 This is sent if the HID device driver wants to send raw data to the I/O
148 device. You should read the payload and forward it to the device. The payload
149 is of type "struct uhid_data_req".
150 This may be received even though you haven't received UHID_OPEN, yet.
151
152 UHID_OUTPUT_EV:
153 Same as UHID_OUTPUT but this contains a "struct input_event" as payload. This
154 is called for force-feedback, LED or similar events which are received through
155 an input device by the HID subsystem. You should convert this into raw reports
156 and send them to your device similar to events of type UHID_OUTPUT.
157
158 UHID_FEATURE:
159 This event is sent if the kernel driver wants to perform a feature request as
160 described in the HID specs. The report-type and report-number are available in
161 the payload.
162 The kernel serializes feature requests so there will never be two in parallel.
163 However, if you fail to respond with a UHID_FEATURE_ANSWER in a time-span of 5
164 seconds, then the requests will be dropped and a new one might be sent.
165 Therefore, the payload also contains an "id" field that identifies every
166 request.
167
168Document by:
169 David Herrmann <dh.herrmann@googlemail.com>