Case study

hw-harness: scanner USB protocol investigation

Documents an author-reported scanner investigation comparing vendor-driver USB control transfers with Linux-driver traces to infer initialization, timing and resolution parameters. The released harness organizes reference capture and comparison; it does not automatically recover a complete protocol specification.

Targets: Protocol
Category: Independent reconstruction cases
Relationship: Independent reconstruction project
Sources reviewed: 2026-10-17

Requirements & limits

Prerequisites: Developed on Fedora with libvirt/KVM and a Windows 11 Pro guest running the vendor driver. The documented USB case uses a Plustek scanner with device ID 07b3:1825; physical hardware is required.
Prerequisites: USB passthrough, host-side usbmon capture, appropriate host privileges and a matching Linux-side operation are needed for comparable traces. The harness supplies capture/control tooling rather than an automatic protocol decoder.
Scope: The generic harness was published after the original bespoke investigation. Its separate MIPI camera example inspects configuration, ACPI and calibration data rather than using the scanner’s USB capture path.
Testing evidence: Hardware outcomes and Claude involvement are author-reported.
License: The pinned harness code is MIT-licensed. Vendor software and driver dependencies remain separate inputs.

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The description was reviewed against primary sources.

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Primary sources

examples/plustek-film-scanner/README.md GitHub · cschalle/hw-harness · Revision 093afc5
README.md GitHub · cschalle/hw-harness · Revision 093afc5
doc/method.md GitHub · cschalle/hw-harness · Revision 093afc5
examples/ipu7-imx471/README.md GitHub · cschalle/hw-harness · Revision 093afc5
LICENSE GitHub · cschalle/hw-harness · Revision 093afc5
https://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2026/10/15/aiandreverseengineerhardware/

Requirements & limits

About this entry

Primary sources

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