help needed: Android devices and FTDI dive computers

[Linus Torvalds]

On Wed, Aug 8, 2018 at 12:07 PM Dirk Hohndel <dirk at hohndel.org> wrote:
>
> I believe that to be wrong. As you see in the screenshot posted here,
> there's a name from a database, and a name as reported from the device.
> Clearly the name "Smartinterface" is not what came from some database for
> Vendor ID 0403 - as that is FTDI.

So the USB spec does have the _possibility_ of USB devices returning
strings. But you generally shouldn't rely on them either, because many
don't, or they are "fake".

See

    https://www.beyondlogic.org/usbnutshell/usb5.shtml#StringDescriptors

for some commentary about the string descriptors. Note the "human
readable information and are optional".

But if you care, the strings the Suunto returns are

   Suunto
   Suunto Sports Instrument

for the Product and Manufacturer strings respectively.

But again, the vendor ID/device ID is the actually _identifying_ data.
And not all devices will even have the string data at all.

(Although it's possible that in practice, the dive computer interfaces
end up having them, although they might be fairly random).

             Linus