Control "SwitchBox-USB" USB plug

Sold under various brand names, such as https://www.antrax.de/produkt/switchbox-usb-type-c/.

Prerequisites

• A Linux system
• HIDAPI and headers (install with e.g., sudo apt install libhidapi-dev)
• gcc, make, libusb which should already be present on your system

Building

Just make.

Step-by-step:

• Ensure all required packages listed above are installed on your system
• Open a terminal and navigate to wherever your copy of this repository should live
• Clone this repository: git clone https://github.com/tnibler/switchbox-usb
• Navigate into the created directory: cd switchbox-usb
• Execute make. If everything worked, basically nothing happens.
• List files in the current directory with ls -l. There should be a new file called switchbox

Usage

./switchbox on <VendorID>:<ProductID> or ./switchbox off <VendorID>:<ProductID>.

To find the correct Vendor and Product ID, use lsusb. There will be a line corresponding the Switchbox similar to:

Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0001:0000 Fry's Electronics MCP2200 USB Serial Port Emulator
             VendorID --^     ^--ProductID

Accessing USB devices typically requires root privileges, which means you either have to run the switchbox program with sudo or create udev rule to allow users to access the device.

A command to create a rule that works on most systems is printed by the program:

# /etc/udev/rules.d/99-hid-switchbox.rules
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="<VendorID>", ATTR{idProduct}=="<ProductID>", MODE="0666"

To read the current state (on/off), use ./switchbox get.

MCP2200 datasheet