[Thumbgps-devel] USB handshake signals and Linux

[Eric S. Raymond]

Patrick Maupin <pmaupin at gmail.com>:
> On Thu, Mar 15, 2012 at 1:31 PM, Eric S. Raymond <esr at thyrsus.com> wrote:
> 
> > As a workaround, GPSD picks up devices that report USB vendor-id/product-ID
> > pairs associated with USB-to-serial adapters like the PL2303 that are
> > commonly used for GPSes.  Because this is in fact the overwhelimingly
> > most common use for USB-to-serial adapters, this bodge works for almost
> > everyone almost all the time.
> 
> For what it's worth, FTDI will give you a free PID to use with their
> VID with justification.  So we could have a VID/PID that uniquely
> identifies our dongle, and/or a VID/PID that we can allow other
> manufacturers to use for any dongle using an FTDI chip and meeting the
> right specifications.

Oh, that's nice.
 
> I don't know if Prolific has a similar program or not.

I don't know either.  Might be difficult to get the vendors to implement
it if they did - their focus on cost-cutting is pretty brutal, and leads
to chop-shop engineering with results you've already seen in the Xucai
dongle.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>