Electronics > Projects, Designs, and Technical Stuff

USB VID: Request for rant

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richw42:
Suppose I'm a small operator, and I've designed a USB device, and now I'd like
to sell it. In order to do so, I need a unique vendor ID and product ID for the
device (VID/PID). Well, a VID costs a whopping US$5000 (recently raised from $2000),
and you're not allowed to sell any of your 65536 PIDs to anyone else.
http://www.usb.org/developers/vendor/
If you're lucky enough to have used a Microchip, TI, or (?) chip, you can get a free
PID from them. That's apparently allowed since you bought the hardware from them.
But how about Cypress? Nope.
I think this situation deserves a rant!

fluxcapacitor:
http://www.cypress.com/?app=forum&id=2232&rID=64474

a workaround .

c4757p:
I don't really understand (an implementation-based reason) why USB couldn't have used something like a 128-bit randomly generated UUID. No need for a registry, they're almost guaranteed not to clash. All it needs to do is provide a way for your device to identify itself to a driver... And it's not like USB devices would have nowhere to stuff a 128-bit ID...

But then, "no registry" means the inventors couldn't lazily continue to profit off their old invention for over a decade without having to improve it... seriously, we're up to USB 3.0, why do I need to pay you to use 1.0? That's like if Hyundai got a cut when I bought my used car...

Harvs:

--- Quote from: richw42 on September 13, 2013, 12:44:06 am ---Suppose I'm a small operator,

--- End quote ---

Depends on how small.  If you're not selling a consumer product, and you're not putting any form of official USB logos on the packaging, you can probably get away with just picking one and using it.  If it is only going on machines in a certain context (e.g. industrial niche) and you never claimed for it to be compliant under the terms of the USB org, no-one is going to care less.

mikeselectricstuff:
As the USB people have clearly shown over the years that they don't give a toss, the best approach is probably to pressure the silicon manufacturers, for whom the fee is negligible. There are enough manufacturers who will provide VID/PID pairs that it is quite reasonable to ask why other makers aren't supporting their users as well.
There is one guy still selling allocations which were obtained before the USB people restricted resale
- the original guy who did this was threatened by the USB mob and decided to stop

The Openmoko project have donated their VID for use by open source projects   

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