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Obtaining a USB Vendor/Product ID?
Qeygh asks: "I am interested in developing some hardware devices for my own use and, since RS-232 is dying, would like to use USB to communicate with them. If they work out well I may offer kits for sale. To do this right I should get a USB Vendor ID so that the devices can be uniquely identified by the host; but, being cheap, I don't want to drop the $1500 that USB.org charges for one. Does anyone know of any alternatives -- perhaps someone who bought a Vendor ID and re-sells small blocks of Product IDs? If no-one out there is doing this yet, is it a service that anyone else would use?"
what? no GNAA frist p0st?
... then, make an investment for the 'business' you will make from this, and pay the $1500 to get your own Vendor ID.
... there is a door fee, and that door fee is $1500.
Shirking out of paying a vendor ID when you want to sell product based on USB is just stupid. USB requires a unique vendor ID, that database of vendor ID's needs to be maintained and administered, and the cost for that is $1500. Fair enough, welcome to business.
Pay the fee, if you're going to sell kits. It is the only thing that makes sense. You want to use USB, well
If you're not going to sell kits, you don't need your own Vendor ID. Just use nulls for everything, or make one up for your own lab purposes.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
When I think of dirty old men, I think of Ike Thomas and when I think about Ike I get a hard on that won't quit.
."
."
."
Sixty years ago,I worked in what was once my Grandfather's Greenhouses. Gramps had died a year earlier and Grandma, now in her seventies had been forced to sell to the competition. I got a job with the new owners and mostly worked the range by myself. That summer, they hired a man to help me get the benches ready for the fall planting.
Ike always looked like he was three days from a shave and his whiskers were dirty white under the brim of his battered felt fedora.
He did nott chew tobacco but the corners of his mouth turned down in a way that, at any moment, I expected a trickle of thin, brown juice to creep down his chin. His bushy, brown eyebrows shaded pale, gray eyes.
Old Ike, he extended his hand, lifted his leg like a dog about to mark a bush and let go the loudest fart I ever heard. The old man winked at me. OIke Thomas is the name and playing pecker's my game.
I thought he said, "Checkers." I was nineteen, green as grass. I said, "I was never much good at that game."
"Now me," said Ike, "I just love jumping men. .
"I'll bet you do."
". . . and grabbing on to their peckers," said Ike.
"I though we were talking about. .
"You like jumping old men's peckers?"
I shook my head.
"I reckon we'll have to remedy that." Ike lifted his right leg and let go another tremendous fart. "He said, "We best be getting to work."
That summer of1941 was a more innocent time. I learned most of the sex I knew from those little eight pager cartoon booklets of comic-page characters going at it. Young men read them in the privacy of an outside john, played with themselves, by themselves and didn't brag about it. Sometimes, we got off with a trusted friend and helped each other out.
Under the greenhouse glass, the temperature some times climbed over the hundred degree mark. I had worked stripped to the waist since April and was as browwn as a berry. On only his second day on the job and in the middle of August, Ike wore old fashioned overalls. Those and socks in his hightop work shoes was every stitch he wore. When he bent forward, the bib front billowed out and I could see the white curly hairs on his chest and belly.
"Me? I just love to eat pussy!" Ike licked his lips from corner to corner then stuck it out far enough that the tip could touch the tip of his nose. He said, A man's not a man till he knows first hand, the flavor of a lady's pussy."
"People do that?"
He winked. "Of course the taste of a hard cock ain't to be sneezed at neither. Now you answer me, yes or no. Does a man's cock taste salty or not?"
"I never. .
"Well, old Ike's willing to let you find out."
"No way."
"Just teasing," said Ike. "But don't give me no sass or I'll show you my ass." He winked. Might show it to you anyway, if you was to ask."
"Why would I do that?"
"Curiousity, maybe. I'm guessing you never had a good piece of man ass."
"I'm no queer."
"Now don't be getting judgemental. Enjoying what's at hand ain't beiing queer. It's taking pleasure where you find it with anybody willing." Ike slipped a handside the side slit of his overalls and I could tell he was fondling and straightening out his cock. Now I admit I got me a hole that satisfied a few guys."
I swallowed, hard.
Ike winked. "Care to be asshole buddies?"
***
We worked steadily until noon. Ike drew a worn pocket watch from the bib pocket of his loose overalls and croaked, "Bean time. But first its time to reel out our limber hoses and make with the golden arches before lunch."
I followed I ke to the end of the greenhouse where he stopped at the outside wall of the potting shed. He opened his fly, fished inside, and finger-hooked a soft white penis with a pouting foreskin puckered half an inch pa
This seems to be your best bet. Doesn't look like it would be much of a problem to set up a program and sell or give PID's away though. But, what's to stop random developers from "barrowing" them and causing a difficult to diagnose problem down the line, should you pursue it?
# lsusb
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 4242:2469/40 International Widget Sdn Bhd. FTL469 Hyper Communicator
#
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...do usb.org have a "free for all" equivalent to the IANA reserved address space (192.168/16, 172.16/12, 10/8)?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I suspect you won't make friends by doing this, but I also suspect the value you choose won't be sold to anyone else. :-)
My project doesn't have the funds to get our own VID yet either. So instead we are picking one out of thin air. Since our particular device requires a EEPROM anyway we decided that if it ever becomes popular enough to worry about, we can issue a firmware update that re-writes our VID to the official one.
;)
Just don't use 0x8086 since we all know who has that one...
You could the few IDs that are set aside for testing and are not supposed to be used in reatil things. It's perfectly fine if you make stuff for your use, but when you do start selling the things you'd need to get a real one.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
A lot of times, the manufacturer of the USB chipset you're using will sublet their product ID's for free or nominal cost. (example: Answer 3, part 2). They're happy to sell parts, and it costs them only 1.1 cents a year per PID (they've got a block of 64k; that's a lot of numbers)
Also, correction to Qeygh's original question: it's not just $1500, it's $1500 every two years, for just the numbers Or you can join the USB org for $2500/year and get the numbers for free!
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
I'd recommend buying a USB-RS232 chip.
USB is USB - just a lot of specs to follow and nothing innovative.
It gives you time to concentrate on 'your own' hardware, which after all is what you want.
You get to use the vendors device drivers and VID, and get a couple of PIDs for your own use.
My company has worked quite a bit with FTDI.
They make reliable chips (AFAIKT), and give excellent support.
No sig to see here. Move along.
Who needs a USB logo? If I were selling USB gear, I sure as hell wouldn't pay $750 a year for the use of some stupid logo (especially considering how obfuscated the USB logo is now with USB 2.0 High-Speed, Full-Speed, Low-Speed, Speed-Speed, Slow-Speed. F*ck that.
My product would have a big red circle, with white letters saying "USB" in the middle. 95% of consumers wouldn't notice the difference.
First Lunix developers steal SCO code, now someone wants to steal USB IP. Pay the fucking fee you cheap bastards.
...USB.org uses you!
It won't make anyone happy, but pick an ID that is not in use, start using it, and send them a registered letter stating that you are using it, and have no intention of paying them for the priviledge. Such makes it more likely that it will actually get read by someone who would care.
They don't want collisions as much as you do..
SSL Certificate
just build your device with a bank of dip switches to let the user pick a usb id. anything that is not already on the chain should be ok.
Sounds like it would be easy enough (assuming you could keep USB-org lawyers off your back, if they're against this sort of thing) to set up a sort of 'umbrella company' that pays the $1500 for a VID, then sublicenses individual Product IDs for much less, maybe $5. (The $1500 buys you a VID, which allows you to then make up 0xFFFF (65,536) PIDs for individual devices.)
One could set up a Universal USB Tinkerers Association, or something like that, specifically for this purpose.
Not to say you necessarily should drop the $1500 yourself - this sounds like a simple enough idea, surely someone has done it already, and all you'd have to do is find them.
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
When we bought 8 USB interface chips from FTDI via our local distributor, we got 8 id's for free [FT232BM (serial) or FT245BM (parallel)]. And there are drivers for many os-es for. I'm a member of an association for amateur research for embedded systems however.