HID Monitor

HID (Human Interface Devices) encompass a broad range of devices that facilitate interaction between humans and machines. While commonly associated with keyboards, mice, and controllers, HID technology extends to devices like card readers, LEDs, and telephony equipment. The HID Monitor plugin simplifies USB-based HID development by capturing and inspecting all HID reports exchanged between HID devices and a workstation. This capability is invaluable for debugging and refining HID peripherals, offering developers insights into data transmission and device behavior.

Capabilities

Required

org.jancy.io.usb
 Required for low-level IO operations on USB endpoints.

Basic Setup

  1. Ensure USBPcap is installed if you are on Windows, or that usbmon is enabled if you are on Linux.

Note

On Windows, HID Monitor requires the USBPcap capture driver. USBPcap is bundled with the full IO Ninja .msi installers, so if you installed IO Ninja this way, you are set. However, if you installed IO Ninja from a core .msi installer or a portable .7z package, you must install USBPcap from its official website manually.

On Linux, HID Monitor depends on usbmon, therefore you need to manually enable it to use the plugin.

  1. In IO Ninja, click the “New Session” dropdown and select a new “HID Monitor” session
_images/hid-monitor-getting-started-1.png
  1. From the “Device:” dropdown menu, select the HID device you want to monitor.
_images/hid-monitor-getting-started-2.png
  1. Click the “Capture” button, to the right of the device selection dropdown.
_images/serial-mon-capture.png
  1. Analyze the log as HID traffic is intercepted.
_images/hid-monitor-getting-started-3.png
  1. Adjust settings as needed via the “Settings” button (see “Settings” section below for details)

Settings

_images/hid-monitor-settings.png
Setting Description Default
Device The HID device to be monitored.  
Kernel buffer size Specify the USB monitor engine (usbmon or USBPcap) kernel buffer size (the amount of memory allocated in the kernel for storing captured packets before they are processed). 1MB
Read block size (B) The size of each individual read block submitted to the underlying transport. 4KB
RX buffer size (B) The full size of the incoming data (RX) buffer. Affects read throughput. 16KB
RX buffer full notifications Toggle warnings in log about the incoming data (RX) buffer getting full. off