Hi all you USB experts out there --
I've got what I though was a fairly simple problem that's turning out to be pretty difficult. I'm hoping somebody can point me in the right direction. I'm looking for an inexpensive, pre-built cable/adapter/device which will allow me to use a Linux PC to simulate USB keyboard input to another device. In my case, the "other" device happens to be a Scientific Atlanta cable TV box which will accept a USB keyboard for channel-change control, however this isn't necessarily relevant to the problem. The "other" device could just as easily be another workstation -- the specific goal is to make a Linux workstation look like a USB keyboard to another device. Anyway...
I'm willing to write my own software, but the hardware component eludes me. So far, this is what I've considered/tried.
* As I understand it, a standard male-to-male USB cable won't work because both the Linux PC and the SA cable box are USB host controllers, therefore both want to be the master in the USB master/slave relationship.
* I bought a host-to-host USB cable commonly used for file transfer purposes, but the problem with these cables is that the in-line electronics are hard-wired to act as network slave devices. This is a deal-breaker if you're trying to simulate a keyboard. As far as I can tell, there's no way to do the device negotiation in software, so there's no way to fool the device on the other end of the cable into thinking the Linux PC is a keyboard. I think what I need is a "dumber" version of this cable that gives me some way to do the device negotiation in software.
* I've found all kinds of electronic solutions to generate keyboard input, but they either can't be controlled by software alone (they're essentially hardware solutions that are controlled by closing electrical relays, etc.) or are relatively expensive ($100+).
Basically, I'm sitting here looking at the USB port on my Linux box and the USB port on the cable box, it thinking that if I could just get the hardware part of a controller-to-controller problem solved, I could do the rest in software.
Anybody know if there is such a cheap, pre-built cable or adapter, and if so, what they're called and where would I find one? And before I get the obvious suggestion, yes, I've spent several hours Googling for such a piece of hardware, but so far haven't found what I'm looking for.
Thanks,
- Cedric
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