USB Vendor & Product IDs

[Prime73]

Hi All,
Just wondering if it's possible (already exists maybe) to get free USB Vendor ID and Product ID for open hardware project? USB-IF charges $5'000 annually for this thing and I don't think I can afford to pay that much for a licence in a low budget DIY project. Besides if I plan to release it as open hardware - there should be a way around this? Do they have a "generic" vendor/product id to use in development prototype, diy, etc? I think if would be nice to see an "open hardware" vendor in the list or something like that.

[Psi]

openmoko opened up their ID's for use by the FOSS community.

Your project has to be free and open-source before you apply for it.
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/USB_Product_IDs

They get a lot of people annoying them asking for ID's to use in new and non-existent projects so be sure your project is all PUBLISHED as open source before you email them to ask for an ID

Looks like they've assigned 165 out of a possible 65535 device ID's to FOSS projects

[Bored@Work]

Also some vendors give out a PID from a VID they own if you use their chip.

But in general, for a DIY project I give a fart about a "legal" VID/PID. For extra fun I pick a VID from the USB-IF blacklist http://www.usb.org/developers/tools/obsoletevids011411.pdf

[amyk]

You don't have to claim USB standard compliance, and you can pick any VID:PID that's not in use... tons of unknown Chinese manufacturers probably do this.

http://www.usb.org/developers/tools/obsoletevids011411.pdf

Taiwan OEM   65535

[lpc32]

There are various reports/articles on the web on the USB-IF's nastiness. They're doing no one any good with their attitude, not even themselves.

Here's a recent one:
http://www.arachnidlabs.com/blog/2013/10/18/usb-if-no-vid-for-open-source/

An idea: use something neutral enough as the primary id, and come up with a format for a secondary ID using some USB descriptor, or actually, maybe part of the serial number field (alt_vid:alt_pid:actual_sn). If more and more people stick to a common format for this, it could become a de facto standard that bypasses the USB-IF. Definitely easy to do on open source OSes, but perhaps there's a clean way to support it retroactively also on Windows with a 3rd party driver.

for a DIY project I give a fart about a "legal" VID/PID. For extra fun I pick a VID from the USB-IF blacklist

People should do more than that. Not only opensource/DIY; small companies that produce a few 100s or a few 1000s should use established IDs on purpose; with an option to set the ID to something random as a fallback on the device and with a way to set the driver id. When the market starts seeing more and more of these, and with more public awareness, perhaps the USB-IF will get some sense.

http://www.usb.org/developers/tools/obsoletevids011411.pdf

Fry's Electronics VID == 1. That's interesting.

[Prime73]

I thought there is an ID for open hardware projects in place and I was thinking it would be cool to use it. Seems like there is none and I don't see the point to use something from these lists, etc. I'll leave the ID from the USB chip I use and call it a day.

[macboy]

There are a few companies that own a VID and will sell you a PID of your very own for a small fee. Your product's unique ID is then their VID plus your PID. One such company is MCS Electronics for 10 EUR. I do not endorse them, I found that on google.

If you are using a Microchip PIC microcontroller, then you can apply to Microchip to give you a PID for free.

[hans]

There was a Dutch/English web shop (voti.nl) that sold USB VID/PID from a pool he owned, but he was ordered to stop selling those licenses.

Dangerous prototypes has done a presentation about USB in open source hardware, and how problematic it was. The options they mentioned for a product such a bus pirate were to use a microcontroller like Microchip, that allows people to lift on their VID or use chips like FTDI which uses proprietary drivers anyway and let them handle it all of it.
They also mentioned collaboration projects with VID/PID and most of them were eventually taken down. However, this presentation is some time back (1-2 years?) so things may have changed, but certainly the USB organization is not very on these things (nor helping themselves).

I personally wouldn't give a toss and would just use any number I find convenient. At a company we had this product that occasionally would be connected to a customer (or our PC) for software servicing and setup, and used a 4-port FTDI chip. To make it more identifiable, I changed the VID/PID to something from the "dead list" and voila, we give it a nice name in device manager and name each serial port (with 4-port FTDI chip it's nice to know what's connected on what!).
The volume is very small of this product, we are on SN# 19 after 3 years. A licensing fee of 5k$ over 20 products would triple the cost. Ouch.

Doing this is OK in Windows Xp/7, but in Windows 8 the FTDI drivers become unsigned (VID/PID doesn't match) and become a pain to install, especially on normal consumers PC's (which may not be running Windows in Test Mode). But I guess that is applicable for many custom VID/PID drivers.

[Dago]

There are a few companies that own a VID and will sell you a PID of your very own for a small fee. Your product's unique ID is then their VID plus your PID. One such company is MCS Electronics for 10 EUR. I do not endorse them, I found that on google.

If you are using a Microchip PIC microcontroller, then you can apply to Microchip to give you a PID for free.

Based on the Arachnid Labs link giving away or selling PIDs is illegal nowadays. Says they changed the license.

[con-f-use]

V-USB "Comes with freely usable USB identifiers (Vendor-ID and Product-ID pairs)." They got theirs from voti and flirc.tv. They way they handled it was to buy an assurence that the original owners wouldn't use their IDs instead of buying them.

From their 12 2012 release:

==================================
WHO IS THE OWNER OF THE VENDOR-ID?
==================================

Objective Development has obtained ranges of USB Product-IDs under two
Vendor-IDs: Under Vendor-ID 5824 from Wouter van Ooijen (Van Ooijen
Technische Informatica, www.voti.nl) and under Vendor-ID 8352 from Jason
Kotzin (now flirc.tv, Inc.). Both VID owners have received their Vendor-ID
directly from usb.org.


=========================================================================
CAN I USE USB-IDs FROM OBJECTIVE DEVELOPMENT WITH OTHER DRIVERS/HARDWARE?
=========================================================================

The short answer is: Yes. All you get is a guarantee that the IDs are never
assigned to anybody else. What more do you need?


============================
WHAT ABOUT SHARED ID PAIRS?
============================

Objective Development has reserved some PID/VID pairs for shared use. You
have no guarantee of uniqueness for them, except that no USB compliant device
uses them. In order to avoid technical problems, we must ensure that all
devices with the same pair of IDs use the same driver on kernel level. For
details, see the file USB-IDs-for-free.txt.


======================================================
I HAVE HEARD THAT SUB-LICENSING OF USB-IDs IS ILLEGAL?
======================================================

A 16 bit integer number cannot be protected by copyright laws. It is not
sufficiently complex. And since none of the parties involved entered into the
USB-IF Trademark License Agreement, we are not bound by this agreement. So
there is no reason why it should be illegal to sub-license USB-IDs.

[magetoo]

I thought there is an ID for open hardware projects in place and I was thinking it would be cool to use it.

IIRC some people have been using 0xF055 ("FOSS") as VID; this is not officially sanctioned in any way, just an alternative to picking a number out of the air like 1234 or 4242.

[free_electron]

There is a prototyping VID available and you can request a PID from the USB-IF.
Caveat is : you can not release any product with that vid pid combination outside of your lab.

USB-IF is the OWNER of the USB standard and it sets the rules.
ANY product release needs to pass USB certification and requires a unique VID/PID pair.

Certification is a process where impedance, crosstalk , eye patterns, signal levels and other stuff is checked. you don't stand a chance to pass a hobby product unless you know what you are doing.  you also need the 'golden tree' a contraption of powered and unpowered hubs, mice, harddisks and other stuff. running the test suite you must plug in your device in this golden tree and it should work fine. many devices fail. ( too much power consumption , spikes, voltage brownouts. )

the easiest solution is to simply use a device that comes with its own vid.pid like the FTDI devices.

[ve7xen]

I thought there is an ID for open hardware projects in place and I was thinking it would be cool to use it.

IIRC some people have been using 0xF055 ("FOSS") as VID; this is not officially sanctioned in any way, just an alternative to picking a number out of the air like 1234 or 4242.

From the comments on a link upthread: http://f055.cc/

[lpc32]

USB-IF is the OWNER of the USB standard and it sets the rules. ANY product release needs to pass USB certification and requires a unique VID/PID pair.

If I'm not mistaken, you only need to be licensed if you use the USB logo.

Certification is a process where impedance, crosstalk ...

I don't think CE or FCC certification requires you to pay the USB-IF.

[lpc32]

Yeah, I'm sure there are plenty of "rogue" users. Though, those adapters just use the default id of the chip vendor (and its default drivers).

[Prime73]

That's what I've decided to use. no point to go all that trouble and get a "proper id". I thought that there is one for open hardware and it would be cool to use that one. Since this is not the case - I'll use one from the chip vendor and call it a day.

Yeah, I'm sure there are plenty of "rogue" users. Though, those adapters just use the default id of the chip vendor (and its default drivers).

[made2hack]

Here is Ian from Dangerous Prototypes speaking on precisely this subject:

[lpc32]

Wrap the driver up in a custom installer for further obfuscation...

Odd. More work for them, and bad for the users who have to work to figure out how to use newer/different OS drivers.