node-hid - Access USB HID devices from Node.js

• Platform Support
• Installation
  • Installation Special Cases
• Examples
• Usage
  • List all HID devices connected
  • Opening a device
  • Reading from a device
  • Writing to a device
• Complete API
  • devices = HID.devices()
  • device = new HID.HID(path)
  • device = new HID.HID(vid,pid)
  • device.on('data', function(data) {} )
  • device.on('error, function(error) {} )
  • device.write(data)
  • device.close()
  • device.pause()
  • device.resume()
  • device.read(callback)
  • device.readSync()
  • device.readTimeout(time_out)
  • device.sendFeatureReport(data)
  • device.getFeatureReport(report_id, report_length)
• Notes for Specific Devices
• Linux-specific Notes
  • usage and usagePage device info fields
  • hidraw support
  • udev device permissions
• Compiling from source
• To build node-hid from source for your project:
• To build node-hid for development:
• Using node-hid in Electron projects
• Using node-hid in NW.js projects
• Support

Platform Support

node-hid supports Node.js v4 and upwards. For versions 0.10 and 0.12, you will need to build from source. The platforms, architectures and node versions node-hid supports are the following. Those with checks we provide pre-built binaries, for the others you will need to compile.

Platform / Arch	Node v4.x	Node v6.x	Node v7.x	Node v8.x	Electron v1.0.2	Electron v1.2.8	Electron v1.3.13	Electron v1.4.15	Electron v1.5.0	Electron v1.6.0	Electron v1.7.0
Windows / x86	☑	☑	☑	☑	☑	☑	☑	☑	☑	☑	☑
Windows / x64	☑	☑	☑	☑	☑	☑	☑	☑	☑	☑	☑
Mac OSX / x64	☑	☑	☑	☑	☑	☑	☑	☑	☑	☑	☑
Linux / x64	☑	☑	☑	☑	☑	☑	☑	☑	☑	☑	☑
Linux / ia32¹	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
Linux / ARM v6¹	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
Linux / ARM v7¹	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
Linux / ARM v8¹	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
Linux / MIPSel¹	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
Linux / PPC64¹	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐

¹ ia32, ARM, MIPSel and PPC64 platforms are known to work but are not currently part of our test or build matrix. ARM v4 and v5 was dropped from Node.js after Node v0.10.

Installation

For most "standard" use cases (node v4.x on mac, linux, windows on a x86 or x64 processor), node-hid will install nice and easy with a standard:

npm install node-hid

Installation Special Cases

We are using prebuild to compile and post binaries of the library for most common use cases (linux, mac, windows on standard processor platforms). If you are on a special case, node-hid will work, but it will compile the binary when you install.

If node-hid doesn't have a pre-built binary for your system (e.g. Linux on Raspberry Pi), node-gyp is used to compile node-hid locally. It will need the pre-requisites listed in Compling from source below.

Examples

In the src/ directory, various JavaScript programs can be found that talk to specific devices in some way. Some interesting ones:

• show-devices.js - display all HID devices in the system
• test-ps3-rumbleled.js - Read PS3 joystick and control its LED & rumblers
• test-powermate.js - Read Griffin PowerMate knob and change its LED
• test-blink1.js - Fade colors on blink(1) RGB LED
• test-bigredbutton.js - Read Dreamcheeky Big Red Button

To try them out, call them like node src/showdevices.js from the node-hid directory.

Usage

List all HID devices connected

var HID = require('node-hid');
var devices = HID.devices();

devices will contain an array of objects, one for each HID device available. Of particular interest are the vendorId and productId, as they uniquely identify a device, and the path, which is needed to open a particular device.

Sample output:

HID.devices();
[ { vendorId: 1452,
    productId: 595,
    path: 'USB_05ac_0253_0x100a148e0',
    serialNumber: '',
    manufacturer: 'Apple Inc.',
    product: 'Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad',
    release: 280,
    interface: -1 },
  { vendorId: 1452,
    productId: 595,
    path: 'USB_05ac_0253_0x100a14e20',
    serialNumber: '',
    manufacturer: 'Apple Inc.',
    product: 'Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad',
    release: 280,
    interface: -1 },
<and more>

Opening a device

Before a device can be read from or written to, it must be opened. The path can be determined by a prior HID.devices() call. Use either the path from the list returned by a prior call to HID.devices():

var device = new HID.HID(path);

or open the first device matching a VID/PID pair:

var device = new HID.HID(vid,pid);

The device variable will contain a handle to the device. If an error occurs opening the device, an exception will be thrown.

Reading from a device

A node-hid device is an EventEmitter. Reading from a device is performed by registering a "data" event handler:

device.on("data", function(data) {});

You can also listen for errors like this:

device.on("error", function(err) {});

Notes:

• All reading is asynchronous
• The data event receives INPUT reports. To receive Feature reports, see the readFeatureReport() method below.
• To remove an event handler, close the device with device.close()

Writing to a device

Writing to a device is performed using the write call in a device handle. All writing is synchronous.

device.write([0x00, 0x01, 0x01, 0x05, 0xff, 0xff]);

Notes:

• The write() method sends OUTPUT reports. To send Feature reports, see the sendFeatureReport() method below.
• Some devices use reportIds for OUTPUT reports. If that is the case, the first byte of the array to write() should be the reportId.
• BUG: if the first byte of a write() is 0x00, you may need to prepend an extra 0x00 due to a bug in hidapi (see issue #187)

Complete API

devices = HID.devices()

• Return array listing all connected HID devices

device = new HID.HID(path)

• Open a HID device at the specifed platform-speific path

device = new HID.HID(vid,pid)

• Open first HID device with speciic VendorId and ProductId

device.on('data', function(data) {} )

• data - Buffer - the data read from the device

device.on('error, function(error) {} )

• error - The error Object emitted

device.write(data)

• data - the data to be synchronously written to the device

device.close()

Closes the device. Subsequent reads will raise an error.

device.pause()

Pauses reading and the emission of data events.

device.resume()

This method will cause the HID device to resume emmitting data events. If no listeners are registered for the data event, data will be lost.

When a data event is registered for this HID device, this method will be automatically called.

device.read(callback)

Low-level function call to initiate an asynchronous read from the device. callback is of the form callback(err, data)

device.readSync()

Return an array of numbers data. If an error occurs, an exception will be thrown.

device.readTimeout(time_out)

• time_out - timeout in milliseconds Return an array of numbers data. If an error occurs, an exception will be thrown.

device.sendFeatureReport(data)

• data - data of HID feature report, with 0th byte being report_id ([report_id,...])

device.getFeatureReport(report_id, report_length)

• report_id - HID feature report id to get
• report_length - length of report

Notes for Specific Devices

• Xbox 360 Controller on Windows 10 -- does not work

Linux-specific Notes

usage and usagePage device info fields

These are not available on Linux, only Mac and Windows. For reason why, and to ask for its addition, see: signal11/hidapi#6

hidraw support

To install node-hid with the hidraw driver instead of the default libusb one, install the "libudev-dev" package and rebuild the library with:

npm install node-hid --driver=hidraw

udev device permissions

Most Linux distros use udev to manage access to physical devices, and USB HID devices are normally owned by the root user. To allow non-root access, you must create a udev rule for the device, based on the devices vendorId and productId.

This rule is a file, placed in /etc/udev/rules.d, with the lines:

SUBSYSTEM=="input", GROUP="input", MODE="0666"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="27b8", ATTRS{idProduct}=="01ed", MODE:="666", GROUP="plugdev"

(the above is for vendorId = 27b8, productId = 01ed)

Then the udev service is reloaded with: sudo udevadm control --reload-rules For an example, see the blink1 udev rules.

Compiling from source

To compile & develop locally or if prebuild cannot download a pre-built binary for you, you will need the following tools:

• All OSes:

  • node-gyp installed globally: npm install -g node-gyp

• Linux (kernel 2.6+) : install examples shown for Ubuntu

  • Compilation tools: apt install build-essential git
  • gcc-4.8+: apt install gcc-4.8 g++-4.8 && export CXX=g++-4.8
  • libusb-1.0-0 w/headers:sudo apt install libusb-1.0-0 libusb-1.0-0-dev
  • libudev-dev: (Fedora only) yum install libusbx-devel

• Mac OS X 10.8+

  • Xcode

• Windows XP, 7, 8, 10

  • Visual C++ compiler and Python 2.7
    • either:
      • npm install --global windows-build-tools
      • add %USERPROFILE%\.windows-build-tools\python27 to PATH, like PowerShell: $env:Path += ";$env:USERPROFILE\.windows-build-tools\python27"
    • or:
      • Python 2.7
      • Visual Studio Express 2013 for Desktop

To build node-hid from source for your project:

npm install node-hid --build-from-source

To build node-hid for development:

• check out a copy of this repo
• change into its directory
• update the submodules
• build the node package

For example:

git clone https://github.com/node-hid/node-hid.git
cd node-hid                                        # must change into node-hid directory
npm run prepublish                                 # get the needed hidapi submodule
npm install --build-from-source                    # rebuilds the module with C code
node ./src/show-devices.js

You will see some warnings from the C compiler as it compiles hidapi (the underlying C library node-hid uses).
This is expected.

Using node-hid in Electron projects

In your electron project, add electron-rebuild and electron-prebuilt to your devDependencies. Then in your package.json scripts add:

  "postinstall": "electron-rebuild --force"

If you want a specific version of electron, do something like:

electron-rebuild -v 0.36.5 --force -m . -w node-hid

Using node-hid in NW.js projects

(TBD)

Support

Please use the node-hid github issues page for support questions and issues.