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I have a device and the drivers for this device. What I would like to do is build an application that mocks a USB device to communicate with a third party application.

More specifically, I am attempting to build an application that can mock a USB device that mimics a Microsoft Zune. I want to make it so my application can register as a zune device and then communicate with the client. I have added several DLL's to my application in order to attempt to determine the calls that tell the software a connected device is a legitimate zune, but so far I haven't had much luck.

I'm new to this type of development - that is mimicking hardware devices, and I'm not very experienced in importing dll's that were written in C/C++. I am using Visual Studio 2010 (.net 4.0) to develop my app, and I would appreciate any help anyone can offer me towards mimicking the hardware. I do have the device drivers, which Visual studio refuses to reference directly. I also have an actual physical device, so I can see what the drivers are that it uses in Device Manager.

The goal is as follows

  1. Application registers itself as a usb device, mimicking a Microsoft Zune in a similar fashion to how Virtual Clone Drive mimics a DVD player.
  2. Application is recognized by zune client as a valid microsoft zune.
  3. Zune Software works with application as it does the hardware device (syncing, etc)
Josh
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  • You need your simulated Zune to do *everything* that a regular Zune can do (at least as far as the USB interface can tell)? You're basically going to have to code a huge part of the Zune firmware. The drivers and the firmware are quite different animals. How much time are you willing to put in to this? It might just be cheaper to go buy 100 real Zunes... – Justin Apr 29 '11 at 19:15
  • It's not going to do all functions. Ideally, it will pass through the sync so that, for instance, you could set up the app to pass media to a specified location. I wanted to make it so the zune software would recognize the device as valid, allow you to pick your sycning strategy through the zune client, and then sync the appropriate media to wherever the application is pointing. The syncing part is actually easy. I can see how to do that already through the client dll's. I want to avoid making my application support selecting which media to sync. I'm aware that might be easier. – Josh Apr 29 '11 at 19:25
  • umockdev helps to mock usb devices http://stackoverflow.com/a/43917529/6180077 – Abdullah Farweez May 11 '17 at 14:03

2 Answers2

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I just found something called the Device Simulation Framework, which might be exactly what you need. It will still require significant research into how USB works to finish your solution, though. And probably still typically done using C or C++.

The Zune uses a modified version of the MTP protocol called MTPZ, but I found this sample using the Device Simulation Framework to simulate a regular MTP device. It's called The MTP Device Simulator. I can't tell if source code is available.

Justin
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Are you able to replace the DLLs used by the zune client software with your own DLLs? In that case, you could wrap the original DLLs with your DLLs and intercept the operations.

Update: To find out the signatures of the functions in the DLL, take a look at the Dependency Walker tool, which will list the exported functions (and lots of other information). I'm guessing you will want to write your replacement DLL in C.

Otherwise, you'll have to write drivers that register a USB device with the proper endpoints. I'm not sure how to do this on Windows - I've only done USB coding on the firmware side, not the driver side. You should be able to use any tutorial for creating a Windows USB driver, like Getting Started with USB Driver Development

Zune specifics information might also be useful. Perhaps this blog post and its sequels could help: Inside the Zune/USB Protocol: Part 1

Justin
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  • I would love to wrap the zune drivers with my own DLL's, but I'm not sure how to extract the method signatures for my imports. – Josh Apr 29 '11 at 20:03
  • @Josh - Try using the Dependency Walker tool (answer updated). – Justin Apr 29 '11 at 20:05
  • Very cool, but it shows the names and not parameters. It looks like I have a lot of guessing to do, as nothing seems zune specific or obvious. – Josh Apr 29 '11 at 20:12
  • @Josh - Yeah, the easier route might actually be writing the virtual USB driver. It looks like it is possible without writing a kernel-mode driver using something called [WinUSB](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff540196.aspx) – Justin Apr 29 '11 at 20:26
  • would it help to use the zune INF file? I'm really shooting in the dark here. – Josh Apr 29 '11 at 20:36