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From: eric selk on 25 Sep 2009 11:41
I'm in search of a cheap and easily available (I need to start with
small quantities) USB device. Pretty much anything small that can be
plugged in to a USB port. I want something that will cause Windows to
give the least amount of feedback possible when plugged in, not
something that Windows might try to autoplay, and for sure not
something that Windows will ask the user to install a driver for.

The purpose would be for my software which is already installed and
running on the PC to query the device for the unique serial number. I
don't need to use the device for anything else, just the serial
number.

I have another program that uses flash drives for this, and I can
query the serial number fine (serial number and product name/vendor
name set by the OEM). For that product we like the autoplay/autorun
features because we use that for our software install, and then we
unmount the volume so that it doesn't autorun in the future. For this
product we will have nothing on the device, and will only be using the
serial number. I know I could cancel the autoplay (although I'm not
sure how I could cancel just for our device and not other flash drives
the user may have), and after the first time I can unmount the volume
that Windows assigns so that it doesn't autoplay in the future... but
ideally this device would never autoplay (without me breaking other
USB autoplay), and wouldn't show up as a drive or even have any
storage space on it (would think it would be cheaper).

I've seen various "dongles" and "smart card" devices that people are
selling for copy protection, but they are a combined software and
hardware solution, or are more expensive than plain flash drives, and
we aren't using this for copy protection or login/security. It
doesn't need to be "secure", I can't really say exactly what our idea
is, but it isn't anything related to security or copy protection.

We currently pay about $5 each for the flash drives, so anything in
that range or cheaper would work, especially if the user experience
was better (no autoplay). I think a HID device would be ideal, but it
needs to be small/generic, not something like an actual mouse or
keyboard... something that looks like a flash drive would be ideal.
From: Doron Holan [MSFT] on 25 Sep 2009 14:22
I would got with a hid compliant device. HID does not necessarily mean a
mouse or a keyboard, HID covers a huge range of usages. you can put it into
whatever form factor you want.

d

--

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.


"eric selk" <eselk2003(a)gmail.com> wrote in message
news:9f154c2a-062a-46dc-b236-9d3116a90ac3(a)z4g2000prh.googlegroups.com...
> I'm in search of a cheap and easily available (I need to start with
> small quantities) USB device. Pretty much anything small that can be
> plugged in to a USB port. I want something that will cause Windows to
> give the least amount of feedback possible when plugged in, not
> something that Windows might try to autoplay, and for sure not
> something that Windows will ask the user to install a driver for.
>
> The purpose would be for my software which is already installed and
> running on the PC to query the device for the unique serial number. I
> don't need to use the device for anything else, just the serial
> number.
>
> I have another program that uses flash drives for this, and I can
> query the serial number fine (serial number and product name/vendor
> name set by the OEM). For that product we like the autoplay/autorun
> features because we use that for our software install, and then we
> unmount the volume so that it doesn't autorun in the future. For this
> product we will have nothing on the device, and will only be using the
> serial number. I know I could cancel the autoplay (although I'm not
> sure how I could cancel just for our device and not other flash drives
> the user may have), and after the first time I can unmount the volume
> that Windows assigns so that it doesn't autoplay in the future... but
> ideally this device would never autoplay (without me breaking other
> USB autoplay), and wouldn't show up as a drive or even have any
> storage space on it (would think it would be cheaper).
>
> I've seen various "dongles" and "smart card" devices that people are
> selling for copy protection, but they are a combined software and
> hardware solution, or are more expensive than plain flash drives, and
> we aren't using this for copy protection or login/security. It
> doesn't need to be "secure", I can't really say exactly what our idea
> is, but it isn't anything related to security or copy protection.
>
> We currently pay about $5 each for the flash drives, so anything in
> that range or cheaper would work, especially if the user experience
> was better (no autoplay). I think a HID device would be ideal, but it
> needs to be small/generic, not something like an actual mouse or
> keyboard... something that looks like a flash drive would be ideal.

From: Pavel A. on 25 Sep 2009 20:44
Try a flash drive formatted with some kind of file system not recognized by
Windows?
--pa


"eric selk" <eselk2003(a)gmail.com> wrote in message
news:9f154c2a-062a-46dc-b236-9d3116a90ac3(a)z4g2000prh.googlegroups.com...
> I'm in search of a cheap and easily available (I need to start with
> small quantities) USB device. Pretty much anything small that can be
> plugged in to a USB port. I want something that will cause Windows to
> give the least amount of feedback possible when plugged in, not
> something that Windows might try to autoplay, and for sure not
> something that Windows will ask the user to install a driver for.
>
> The purpose would be for my software which is already installed and
> running on the PC to query the device for the unique serial number. I
> don't need to use the device for anything else, just the serial
> number.
>
> I have another program that uses flash drives for this, and I can
> query the serial number fine (serial number and product name/vendor
> name set by the OEM). For that product we like the autoplay/autorun
> features because we use that for our software install, and then we
> unmount the volume so that it doesn't autorun in the future. For this
> product we will have nothing on the device, and will only be using the
> serial number. I know I could cancel the autoplay (although I'm not
> sure how I could cancel just for our device and not other flash drives
> the user may have), and after the first time I can unmount the volume
> that Windows assigns so that it doesn't autoplay in the future... but
> ideally this device would never autoplay (without me breaking other
> USB autoplay), and wouldn't show up as a drive or even have any
> storage space on it (would think it would be cheaper).
>
> I've seen various "dongles" and "smart card" devices that people are
> selling for copy protection, but they are a combined software and
> hardware solution, or are more expensive than plain flash drives, and
> we aren't using this for copy protection or login/security. It
> doesn't need to be "secure", I can't really say exactly what our idea
> is, but it isn't anything related to security or copy protection.
>
> We currently pay about $5 each for the flash drives, so anything in
> that range or cheaper would work, especially if the user experience
> was better (no autoplay). I think a HID device would be ideal, but it
> needs to be small/generic, not something like an actual mouse or
> keyboard... something that looks like a flash drive would be ideal.

From: Tim Roberts on 26 Sep 2009 15:10
eric selk <eselk2003(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>I'm in search of a cheap and easily available (I need to start with
>small quantities) USB device. Pretty much anything small that can be
>plugged in to a USB port. I want something that will cause Windows to
>give the least amount of feedback possible when plugged in, not
>something that Windows might try to autoplay, and for sure not
>something that Windows will ask the user to install a driver for.
>
>The purpose would be for my software which is already installed and
>running on the PC to query the device for the unique serial number. I
>don't need to use the device for anything else, just the serial
>number.

Microchip sells a number of inexpensive microcontrollers with USB
functionality, running $5 to $7 in small quantities. They with an
extensive set of sample firmware options, including HID.

HOWEVER, if all you are doing is reading the serial number from the
descriptors, you need to understand that it is trivially easy for someone
who has their own programmable device to burn whatever descriptors they
want into it. It would take me about 60 seconds to burn your descriptors
into one of my FX2 demo boards and spoof your software.
--
Tim Roberts, timr(a)probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.
From: eric selk on 28 Sep 2009 17:50
On Sep 25, 11:22 am, "Doron Holan [MSFT]"
<doron.ho...(a)online.microsoft.com> wrote:
> I would got with a hid compliant device. HID does not necessarily mean a
> mouse or a keyboard, HID covers a huge range of usages. you can put it into
> whatever form factor you want.

This sounds good once we are ready to mass produce something. At our
current stage getting the "form factor" is the dificult part, since we
are pretty limited -- I haven't found any companies that will take a
HID chip and wire it up to a flash drive looking case, at least not in
the $5 per unit price range. Although, I imagine there is someone
that might do this, but trying to get in touch with the right people
could be the dificult part (OEMs aren't exactly easy to contact, and
their local distributors don't know much when it comes to different
stuff like this).
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