Aquaeronix: Tools for Accessing the Aquaero5(R) USB Device

© 2012 lynix lynix47@gmail.com,

© 2013 JinTu JinTu@praecogito.com lynix lynix47@gmail.com,

© 2014 barracks510 barracks510@gmail.com,

© 2015 barracks510 barracks510@gmail.com

SUMMARY

Aquaeronix aims at providing a C interface for accessing the Aquaero5(R) USB device by 'Aqua Computer' (http://www.aqua-computer.de).

It consists of a set of functions for data access and conversion, and a command-line tool using these functions as an example implementation.

REQUIREMENTS

Unlike its predecessor, aerotools, which targets the Aquaero(R) 4.00), Aquaeronix currently uses the USB HIDDEV interface provided by the Linux kernel via the /dev/usb/hiddev? device nodes, so no dependencies for this.

BUILDING

To build the main components of the project simply issue ./configure && make in the project root. Compiled binaries will reside in the subdirectory the were originated in. This software may be permanantly installed and uninstalled using the commands make install and make uninstall respectively.

You may also use the precompiled RPMs located at my repositories. Additional addons may be found under the Aquaeronix github page.

SETUP

To be able to query the Aquaero5(R) device you have to set appropriate access rights for the device node.

You can either do this manually by identifying the device node using lsusb (looking for the Vendor- and Product-ID), or just install a udev rule like this one:

ATTRS{idVendor}=="0c70", ATTRS{idProduct}=="f001", GROUP="aquaero", MODE="0640"

This will give all members of the aquaero group read access to the device.

As the Aquaero5(R) identifies itself as multiple devices (USB keyboard, mouse and the actual device we want to query) you have to examine which device node represents the data source.

In my case, there is /dev/usb/hiddev[0-2] which all match the udev rule provided above. The correct one for me is /dev/usb/hiddev0, but I don't know whether it is always the first one. Just try as stated under USAGE - if you choose the wrong one there will simply be no output at all.

USAGE: aerocli

aerocli, as stated above, is the example implementation of a command-line tool that uses the provided query - and format conversion functions provided by Aquaeronix.

• To query the first device found (via autodiscovery), simply issue aerocli.

• To query a specific device (if you have more than one attached to your system) simply issue aerocli -d /dev/usb/hiddevX (see SETUP for the meaning of X).

• To get a more script-friendly output in the form of KEY=VALUE pairs just add -o export. For more comprehensive output in both default and export modes, use -a, e.g. -a -o default or -a -o export.

• To set software sensor values use -s SENSOR:VALUE i.e. -s 1:30.00 or -s 1:11.11 -s 2:22.22 -s 3:33.33.

Note: Multiple software sensor values must be sent at once. If aerocli is run again and any sensor value is set, all other unspecified sensors are set to default (disconnected).

• To synchronize the Aquaero5(R) time with your system time use -T.

• To set a device/sensor name use -n REFERENCE:INDEX:VALUE i.e. -n "sensors:1:Sensor 1".

• To get a list of the device/sensor name references and all default names, simply omit the argument to -n.

BUGS / CONTACT

Feel free to report any bugs you find using the 'issues' function on GitHub. If you wish to contact the authors, you can drop them an email. You may contact barracks510 at barracks510@gmail.com. For lynix, you might wish to use his GPG key, #4804CCA9 on keys.gnupg.net

LICENSE

This program is published under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 3. See the file 'LICENSE' for more information.