[python] Simple way to query connected USB devices info in Python?

How can we query connected USB devices info in Python? I want to get UID Device Name (ex: SonyEricsson W660), path to device (ex: /dev/ttyACM0)

And also what would be the best Parameter out of above info to be used as identifying the device whenever it's connected again? (UID?)

I am working on Ubuntu 11.04.

ATM I have this code (using pyUSB)

busses = usb.busses()
for bus in busses:
  devices = bus.devices
  for dev in devices:
    print repr(dev)
    print "Device:", dev.filename
    print "  idVendor: %d (0x%04x)" % (dev.idVendor, dev.idVendor)
    print "  idProduct: %d (0x%04x)" % (dev.idProduct, dev.idProduct)
    print "Manufacturer:", dev.iManufacturer
    print "Serial:", dev.iSerialNumber
    print "Product:", dev.iProduct

The problem is I don't get desired output, will paste one example:

<usb.legacy.Device object at 0x1653990>
Device: 
  idVendor: 4046 (0x0fce)
  idProduct: 53411 (0xd0a3)
Manufacturer: 1
Serial: 3
Product: 2

First I don't get filename, it's most important to me. I am assuming it is the /dev/ttyACM0 etc part. Second, I guess there was some UID of every USB device, or I should use both Vendor or Product id?

EDIT: Apparently I have some setup issues, I think I am using wrong USB Library. (using libusb0.1) ATM. That's why I get Device (dev.filename) string empty. If someone can please just tell that on what operating system he is using what USB Library and what version of PyUSB I think it will solve my problems.

This question is related to python usb libusb

The answer is


I can think of a quick code like this.

Since all USB ports can be accessed via /dev/bus/usb/< bus >/< device >

For the ID generated, even if you unplug the device and reattach it [ could be some other port ]. It will be the same.

import re
import subprocess
device_re = re.compile("Bus\s+(?P<bus>\d+)\s+Device\s+(?P<device>\d+).+ID\s(?P<id>\w+:\w+)\s(?P<tag>.+)$", re.I)
df = subprocess.check_output("lsusb")
devices = []
for i in df.split('\n'):
    if i:
        info = device_re.match(i)
        if info:
            dinfo = info.groupdict()
            dinfo['device'] = '/dev/bus/usb/%s/%s' % (dinfo.pop('bus'), dinfo.pop('device'))
            devices.append(dinfo)
print devices

Sample output here will be:

[
{'device': '/dev/bus/usb/001/009', 'tag': 'Apple, Inc. Optical USB Mouse [Mitsumi]', 'id': '05ac:0304'},
{'device': '/dev/bus/usb/001/001', 'tag': 'Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub', 'id': '1d6b:0002'},
{'device': '/dev/bus/usb/001/002', 'tag': 'Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub', 'id': '8087:0020'},
{'device': '/dev/bus/usb/001/004', 'tag': 'Microdia ', 'id': '0c45:641d'}
]

Code Updated for Python 3

import re
import subprocess
device_re = re.compile(b"Bus\s+(?P<bus>\d+)\s+Device\s+(?P<device>\d+).+ID\s(?P<id>\w+:\w+)\s(?P<tag>.+)$", re.I)
df = subprocess.check_output("lsusb")
devices = []
for i in df.split(b'\n'):
    if i:
        info = device_re.match(i)
        if info:
            dinfo = info.groupdict()
            dinfo['device'] = '/dev/bus/usb/%s/%s' % (dinfo.pop('bus'), dinfo.pop('device'))
            devices.append(dinfo)
            
print(devices)

For a system with legacy usb coming back and libusb-1.0, this approach will work to retrieve the various actual strings. I show the vendor and product as examples. It can cause some I/O, because it actually reads the info from the device (at least the first time, anyway.) Some devices don't provide this information, so the presumption that they do will throw an exception in that case; that's ok, so we pass.

import usb.core
import usb.backend.libusb1

busses = usb.busses()
for bus in busses:
    devices = bus.devices
    for dev in devices:
        if dev != None:
            try:
                xdev = usb.core.find(idVendor=dev.idVendor, idProduct=dev.idProduct)
                if xdev._manufacturer is None:
                    xdev._manufacturer = usb.util.get_string(xdev, xdev.iManufacturer)
                if xdev._product is None:
                    xdev._product = usb.util.get_string(xdev, xdev.iProduct)
                stx = '%6d %6d: '+str(xdev._manufacturer).strip()+' = '+str(xdev._product).strip()
                print stx % (dev.idVendor,dev.idProduct)
            except:
                pass

If you just need the name of the device here is a little hack which i wrote in bash. To run it in python you need the following snippet. Just replace $1 and $2 with Bus number and Device number eg 001 or 002.

import os
os.system("lsusb | grep \"Bus $1 Device $2\" | sed 's/\// /' | awk '{for(i=7;i<=NF;++i)print $i}'")

Alternately you can save it as a bash script and run it from there too. Just save it as a bash script like foo.sh make it executable.

#!/bin/bash
myvar=$(lsusb | grep "Bus $1 Device $2" | sed 's/\// /' | awk '{for(i=7;i<=NF;++i)print $i}')
echo $myvar

Then call it in python script as

import os
os.system('foo.sh')

For linux, I wrote a script called find_port.py which you can find here: https://github.com/dhylands/usb-ser-mon/blob/master/usb_ser_mon/find_port.py

It uses pyudev to enumerate all tty devices, and can match on various attributes.

Use the --list option to show all of the know USB serial ports and their attributes. You can filter by VID, PID, serial number, or vendor name. Use --help to see the filtering options.

find_port.py prints the /dev/ttyXXX name rather than the /dev/usb/... name.


If you are working on windows, you can use pywin32 (old link: see update below).

I found an example here:

import win32com.client

wmi = win32com.client.GetObject ("winmgmts:")
for usb in wmi.InstancesOf ("Win32_USBHub"):
    print usb.DeviceID

Update Apr 2020:

'pywin32' release versions from 218 and up can be found here at github. Current version 227.


When I run your code, I get the following output for example.

<usb.Device object at 0xef38c0>
Device: 001
  idVendor: 7531 (0x1d6b)
  idProduct: 1 (0x0001)
Manufacturer: 3
Serial: 1
Product: 2

Noteworthy are that a) I have usb.Device objects whereas you have usb.legacy.Device objects, and b) I have device filenames.

Each usb.Bus has a dirname field and each usb.Device has the filename. As you can see, the filename is something like 001, and so is the dirname. You can combine these to get the bus file. For dirname=001 and filname=001, it should be something like /dev/bus/usb/001/001.

You should first, though figure out what this "usb.legacy" situation is. I'm running the latest version and I don't even have a legacy sub-module.

Finally, you should use the idVendor and idProduct fields to uniquely identify the device when it's plugged in.