Reading a USB Bus with a Pi/Arduino

Question

I have bought some weighing scales which write data to a USB pen (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Homedic-Mibody-Analyser-Body-Scale/dp/B003X33XNM). I then plug that USB pen into my computer and download the information for analysing.

I'm trying to automate the process of getting that data from my scales to my computer and was hoping to use an Arduino or Pi to read the USB bus and send that data to my PC using MQTT or similar.

I don't own an Arduino or Pi yet so was wondering if anyone knows if this is even possible?

Many thanks.

Answer 1

A Raspberry Pi is likely to be the easiest to do this with as you won't have to worry about things like Host USB or basic filesystem support as you would with an Arduino.

The biggest problem will be what format the USB stick uses. If it is just a basic USB mass storage device then it will come down to what file format the data is stored in.

Lets assume the file is either CSV or and Excel spreadsheet it should be easy, but if it is some propriety format then it will be more tricky.

You may want to have a look on http://www.openyou.org/ to see if anybody has already worked the format out.

Answer 2

Another idea is to use a USB SD card adapter and then use a eye-if card (e.g. http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B003E47XIQ/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=B003E47XIQ&linkCode=as2&tag=bespl-21) as the storage.

This eye-fi card can then upload the csv file to somewhere like dropbox or I think even directly to your machine.

It's not a MQTT, Raspberry Pi or Arduino solution, but it may be simpler