Webmail Notifier - Linux Hidraw

I got myself a plastic toy: A small box with a controlable LED that can be turned on- or off, with the intention of notifying the user of unread emails.

https://www.google.de/search?q=webmail+notifier&tbm=isch

My incarnation of this relatively simple concept identifies itself with a USB VID/PID of 0x1294:0x1320:


# lsusb -s 1:14
Bus 001 Device 014: ID 1294:1320 RISO KAGAKU CORP.


And it shows itself in the kernel log as follows:


[10772.855386] usb 1-1.6: new low-speed USB device number 15 using ehci-pci
[10772.949641] hid-generic 0003:1294:1320.000D: hiddev0,hidraw2: USB HID v1.10 Device [MAIL MAIL ] on usb-0000:00:1a.0-1.6/input0


As it registers itself with the HID subsystem, we can use the resulting hidraw device to talk to it without using any script or tool, just make a convenience symlink with useable permissions using a small udev rule:


$ cat /etc/udev/rules.d/99_webmail_notifier.rules
# USB Webmail Notifier (RGB LED)
SUBSYSTEM=="hidraw" SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="1294", ATTRS{idProduct}=="1320", GROUP="users", MODE="0660", SYMLINK="webmailnotify"


Then you can make it change its colour with a simple echo-command in any script:


$ echo -en '\001\0\0\0\0' >/dev/webmailnotify


The only ugly thing about it: It seems to send back some HID report which confuses and angers the kernel routines, but this shall be dealt with at some later point.


[11170.163495] hid-generic 0003:1294:1320.000D: extract() called with n (56) > 32! (swapper/0)