usbreset

This tool resets a USB device. The use case is to attempt to gain functionality again from a device that is unresponsive, for instance a hanging USB BLE adapter. This tool is Linux-only and unfortunately requires running with sudo in order to interact directly with USB devices.

USB devices are specified by Vendor ID (VID) and Product ID (PID). These numbers are unique to a given product and can be found by running lsusb. For example in the following output from lsusb the Vendor ID is 0x0a5c and Product ID is 0x21e8

Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0a5c:21e8 Broadcom Corp. BCM20702A0 Bluetooth 4.0

Usage

var usbreset = require('usbreset');
 
var VID = 0x0a5c;
var PID = 0x21e8;
 
var error = usbreset.reset(VID, PID);
if (error) {
    console.log(error);
} else {
    // USB device has been reset
}
 

Notes

Occasionally this ioctl throws a -19, ENODEV. It's unclear why. Running it a second time usually results in a successful reset.