Intercepting and 'reading' USB data

[Canadian335xi]

I have a pretty interesting project and would appreciate some help.

I have software that reads data from my car's USB port. I would like to learn a few things about the USB connection so that I can communicate with it.

First off, I'm looking for the "comm" settings, things like RTS handshaking, etc. From there I would also want to be able to 'figure out' when I click a button on the laptop and it sends data via USB what EXACTLY does it send (and recieve back) and then how can I do that same thing.

Hopefully someone will give me a good solid lead on this... I googled USB analyzers but there are LOTS and I don't even know what features or "things" I am looking for it to do.

I am programming using MScomm controls in VB6

Thanks.

[madhak]

You mean your car radio USB?? your radio is like a small computer, the USB port is a HOST port and probably have a limited library of USB client capability, most likely Mass-Storage and Media-Services so it can play music and video from USB key and iPod and such...

What exactly are you trying to do? If you want to access car data you have to connect to the ODB2 port with an adapter (USB or Bluetooth) that will give you a serial port to your car BCM and ECU.

Otherwise this USB analyzer will get you going: http://www.totalphase.com/products/beagle-usb12/
Not cheap but there's more expensive option too ;)

You said you want to access the Serial com data, in the unlikely case that your radio has a Serial com port available in the USB stack you could try with 2x FTDI UART to USB module in series to a laptop, if that get detected and you can find the appropriate baud rate to talk to it, not sure what it would have to say tho... A host to host usb cable could work too...