Installing Nike SportWatch GNU/Linux Driver

Long time ago I bought a Nike Sportwatch (sportband) and as I use Debian GNU/Linux at home I wanted to manage my device with Linux. I searched for a Linux driver and I found comsport driver so I decided to give it a chance. You could download the driver from here.

$ tar xvzf allcomsport-0.1.tar.gz

Information needed by the driver

Reading the installation file, INSTALL_DRIVER_AND_GUI, I realized that I had to check the Device ID to verify if all data match with the instructions so I plugged my Sportwatch and execute the following command:

$ lsusb
...
Bus 001 Device 010: ID 11ac:5455 Nike
...

• Bus 001: This is bus number where Nike SportWatch USB is attached.
• Device 010: This is the tenth device attached to bus 001, there are other devices attached to the same bus.
• 11ac:5455 is the ID given to this Nike SportWatch. The sequence before “:” indicates the manufacture ID and number after “:” indicates device ID.

The first thing that I noticed was that the Manufacturer ID obviously matched with the instructions (11ac == Nike) but the Device ID it wasn’t the same as my own device.
So I check my user groups and change the udev rule according my data:

SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="11ac", ATTRS{idProduct}=="5455",
 SYMLINK+="sport", GROUP="aitor", MODE="0666"

• SUBSYSTEMS==”usb” -> the kernel subsystem which generated the request
• ATTRS{idProduct}==”5455″ -> My Device ID
• GROUP=”aitor” -> your user group
• SYMLINK+=”sport” -> a symlink /dev/sport will be created pointing to the device

# cp 90-sportband.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/

Reload udev rules:

# udevadm control --reload-rules

Building the driver

Let’s install all dependencies, please take into account that section depends on your current system so you could need to install additional packages:

# aptitude install intltool libusb-dev
# dpkg -l |grep intltool
ii intltool 0.50.2-3 all Utility scripts for internationalizing XML
ii intltool-debian

It’s time to compile the driver and I found some errors:

$ tar xvzf comsport-0.1.tar.gz
$ mkdir /opt/nike
$ cd comsport/comsport-0.1
$ configure --prefix=/opt/nike
 ...
checking for libusb... configure: error: Package requirements (libusb-1.0) were not met:
No package 'libusb-1.0' found
Consider adjusting the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable if you
installed software in a non-standard prefix.
Alternatively, you may set the environment variables libusb_CFLAGS
and libusb_LIBS to avoid the need to call pkg-config.
See the pkg-config man page for more details.
# dpkg -l|grep libusb
ii libgusb2:amd64 0.2.8-1 amd64 GLib wrapper around libusb1
ii libusb-0.1-4:amd64 2:0.1.12-28 amd64 userspace USB programming library
ii libusb-1.0-0:amd64 2:1.0.20-1 amd64 userspace USB programming library
ii libusb-1.0-0:i386 2:1.0.20-1 i386 userspace USB programming library
...

So let’s find the libusb library:

$ find /lib -iname "*libusb*"
 /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libusb-0.1.so.4
 /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libusb-0.1.so.4.4.4
 /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libusb-1.0.so.0.1.0
 /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libusb-1.0.so.0
 /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libusb-1.0.so.0.1.0
 /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libusb-1.0.so.0

After some tries I found the right settings:

$ libusb_LIBS="-L/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu -lusb" libusb_CFLAGS="-I/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu" ./configure --prefix=/opt/nike

$ make
 make all-recursive
 make[1]: Entering directory '/home/aitor/soft/comsport/comsport-0.1'
 Making all in src
 make[2]: Entering directory '/home/aitor/soft/comsport/comsport-0.1/src'
 /bin/bash ../libtool --tag=CXX --mode=link g++ -g -O2 -o comsport main.o DeviceCom.o BufferControl.o Controller.o Profile.o ConvertControl.o -lusb -L/lib/x86_64-linux-gnui -lusb
 libtool: link: g++ -g -O2 -o comsport main.o DeviceCom.o BufferControl.o Controller.o Profile.o ConvertControl.o -L/lib/x86_64-linux-gnui -lusb
 make[2]: Leaving directory '/home/aitor/soft/comsport/comsport-0.1/src'
 Making all in po
 make[2]: Entering directory '/home/aitor/soft/comsport/comsport-0.1/po'
 make[2]: Nothing to be done for 'all'.
 make[2]: Leaving directory '/home/aitor/soft/comsport/comsport-0.1/po'
 make[2]: Entering directory '/home/aitor/soft/comsport/comsport-0.1'
 make[2]: Leaving directory '/home/aitor/soft/comsport/comsport-0.1'
 make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/aitor/soft/comsport/comsport-0.1'

$ make install
 Making install in src
 make[1]: Entering directory '/home/aitor/soft/comsport/comsport-0.1/src'
 make[2]: Entering directory '/home/aitor/soft/comsport/comsport-0.1/src'
 test -z "/opt/nike/bin" || /bin/mkdir -p "/opt/nike/bin"
 /bin/bash ../libtool --mode=install /usr/bin/install -c comsport '/opt/nike/bin'
 libtool: install: /usr/bin/install -c comsport /opt/nike/bin/comsport
 make[2]: Nothing to be done for 'install-data-am'.
 make[2]: Leaving directory '/home/aitor/soft/comsport/comsport-0.1/src'
 make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/aitor/soft/comsport/comsport-0.1/src'
 Making install in po
 make[1]: Entering directory '/home/aitor/soft/comsport/comsport-0.1/po'
 linguas=""; \
 for lang in $linguas; do \
 dir=/opt/nike/share/locale/$lang/LC_MESSAGES; \
 /bin/bash /home/aitor/soft/comsport/comsport-0.1/install-sh -d $dir; \
 if test -r $lang.gmo; then \
 /usr/bin/install -c -m 644 $lang.gmo $dir/comsport.mo; \
 echo "installing $lang.gmo as $dir/comsport.mo"; \
 else \
 /usr/bin/install -c -m 644 ./$lang.gmo $dir/comsport.mo; \
 echo "installing ./$lang.gmo as" \
 "$dir/comsport.mo"; \
 fi; \
 if test -r $lang.gmo.m; then \
 /usr/bin/install -c -m 644 $lang.gmo.m $dir/comsport.mo.m; \
 echo "installing $lang.gmo.m as $dir/comsport.mo.m"; \
 else \
 if test -r ./$lang.gmo.m ; then \
 /usr/bin/install -c -m 644 ./$lang.gmo.m \
 $dir/comsport.mo.m; \
 echo "installing ./$lang.gmo.m as" \
 "$dir/comsport.mo.m"; \
 else \
 true; \
 fi; \
 fi; \
 done
 make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/aitor/soft/comsport/comsport-0.1/po'
 make[1]: Entering directory '/home/aitor/soft/comsport/comsport-0.1'
 make[2]: Entering directory '/home/aitor/soft/comsport/comsport-0.1'
 make[2]: Nothing to be done for 'install-exec-am'.
 test -z "/opt/nike/doc/comsport" || /bin/mkdir -p "/opt/nike/doc/comsport"
 /usr/bin/install -c -m 644 README COPYING AUTHORS ChangeLog INSTALL NEWS '/opt/nike/doc/comsport'
 make[2]: Leaving directory '/home/aitor/soft/comsport/comsport-0.1'
 make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/aitor/soft/comsport/comsport-0.1'

Testing our new installed driver

Now the driver is built and installed it’s time to test:

/opt/nike/bin/comsport -h
 Comsport v0.1, driver for sportband+
 no sportband found.

In the first try the device wasn’t found, reviewing driver source code I found that ID Device is hardcoded in DeviceCom.cxx file, so I change the following line to match with my Device ID and recompile the source code:

$ vim DeviceCom.cxx
if (dev->descriptor.idVendor == 0x11ac && dev->descriptor.idProduct == 0x5455) {

After that I recompiled source files and executed again the driver binary but unfortunatelly a Segmentation fault is generated. Taking a look to syslog some command failed:

...
[19429.453915] usb 1-1: usbfs: USBDEVFS_CONTROL failed cmd comsport rqt 161 rq 1 len 8 ret -110
 [19430.453924] usb 1-1: usbfs: USBDEVFS_CONTROL failed cmd comsport rqt 161 rq 1 len 64 ret -110
 [19431.453925] usb 1-1: usbfs: USBDEVFS_CONTROL failed cmd comsport rqt 161 rq 1 len 64 ret -110
 [19432.453938] usb 1-1: usbfs: USBDEVFS_CONTROL failed cmd comsport rqt 161 rq 1 len 16 ret -110
 [19432.454022] traps: comsport[24765] general protection ip:406b57 sp:7ffc1a9f8c68 error:0 in comsport[400000+c000]
...

What I learned

At the end driver needs to be modified to work properly with my Sportwatch, so I need to dig deeper if I want to manage this device natively on Debian. A simpler option would be run a virtualized Microsoft Windows and install the Nike drivers.

—
“If things go wrong, don’t go with them”
–Roger Babson