I first experienced an issue trying to connect on Ubuntu running on Proxmox (Virtual Environment)... I thought it was a Proxmox issue. I reached out https://www.reddit.com/r/Proxmox/comments/12sedzx/pass_through_usb_device_to_access_in_vm_devtty/ and believe the issue is actually with Ubuntu. I then tried to connect to Ubuntu via VMware and experienced the same issue.
I documented the issue and how to solve it: https://github.com/Wikilicious/pygmc/tree/v0.7.1#known-issues
GQ GMC uses VID (vendor ID) and PID (Device ID) 1A86:7523. The issue with Ubuntu is that it assumes 1A86:7523 is a “Braille” device (for the blind) and, ironically, blindly treats it as such. Specifically, Ubuntu has udev rules that assumes `1A86:7523` is an `Baum [NLS eReader Zoomax (20 cells)]` device.
The fix is to comment out the udev rule that does this. The text file may be in two places.
/usr/lib/udev/85-brltty.rules OR /usr/lib/udev/rules.d/85-brltty.rules
Find and comment out (or delete) the offending line in the files above: ENV{PRODUCT}=="1a86/7523/*", ENV{BRLTTY_BRAILLE_DRIVER}="bm", GOTO="brltty_usb_run"
It seems all GQ GMC devices use 1A86:7523 from this thread: https://www.gqelectronicsllc.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=9784
Extra issue:
I'm trying to make a package (https://pypi.org/project/pygmc/) to work with Home-Assistant and their docs prescribes a solution GQElectronics should use... https://developers.home-assistant.io/docs/creating_integration_manifest/#usb
quote:
Some VID and PID combinations are used by many unrelated devices. For example VID 10C4 and PID EA60 matches any Silicon Labs CP2102 USB-Serial bridge chip. When matching these type of devices, it is important to match on description or another identifier to avoid an unexpected discovery.
The Issue Connecting GMC to Ubuntu
Posted - 12/03/2023 : 16:17:48
