Reading USB input stream on linux

Had the same problem a few days ago and we discovered this workaround.

You could do the following command at the terminal:

cat /proc/bus/input/devices

This will list your devices connected, and your devices should be on the list. For instance, one item on there appears this way for me:

I: Bus=0011 Vendor=0002 Product=000a Version=0000
N: Name="TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint"
P: Phys=synaptics-pt/serio0/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/platform/i8042/serio4/serio5/input/input15
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=mouse1 event15 
B: PROP=0
B: EV=7
B: KEY=70000 0 0 0 0
B: REL=3

Under Handlers, you'll notice that event15 shows up. You can access the data stream by referencing /dev/input/event15 in my case. You'll have to figure out what it is in your case

Have you tried using mdev? It's a lightweight alternative to udev and it populates /dev. If hotplugging is not enabled you might need to run it manually.

To scan /sys and create devices, try:

mdev -s