Programming a USB TiPro Within A Virtual Machine (VirtualBox)

[mikem]

Hi!

I'm not sure if this information has come up before here, but I couldn't find it when I was looking for it (but admittedly didn't read every page related to TiPros), so ...

If you try to run the programming tool in a virtual machine and assign the USB device of the keyboard to the virtual machine, it fails – somehow it doesn’t like staying assigned to the virtual machine. However there is a fix for this – using the command-line VirtualBox tools to set up a permanent USB filter.

To assign, first of all determine the name of your virtual machine with :-

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VboxManage list vms

Next, add a USB filter – you can normally assign it to “slot” (or index) 1, but you may have to check what slots are available if you already do this :-

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VBoxManage usbfilter add 1 --target "W10" --name TiPro --vendorid 0x1222 --productid 0xfaca

Once that is done, the Windows tool should be able to find the keyboard to start programming it. If necessary, reboot the virtual machine or try assigning the USB device via the menu option.

During programming it is helpful to remember than raw USB HID codes can be used by right-clicking in the input field for a key, selecting “Text Input” and inputing the code in the form “/${hex hid code} ${hex hid code}\” – such as “/69 69\” (a list can be found at: http://www.usb.org/developers/hidpage/Hut1_12v2.pdf)

Removal at the end:

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VBoxManage usbfilter remove 1 --target "W10"

After the removal it seems that disconnecting and reconnecting the device is necessary for Linux to pick it up (or possibly a udevadm trigger).

(In case anyone notices, yes this was copied from my blog entry at https://really.zonky.org/?p=4470 but as nobody reads that it might be more usefully found here)