Hassio Virtualbox usb solution

Spend all evening wondering how to connect my usb rfxcom device to hassio.
Finally figured it out and it is so simple :slight_smile:
So thought I would share.

Click on settings, Enable USB EHCI device before starting hassio
Then the next bit is simple right click on the usb icon in the below status bar and add the device.
If the status bar is not sown, press right ctrl + home key and set your view to scaled mode.
or as in my case I had to change the keys as they to press as I don’t have a right control key :smiley: Tools -> prefrences -> input -> virtual machine and under there change the key…

So when you add the usb device by right clicking the usb cable icon, you will note the address of the usb device mine was ttyUSB0

Can you please explain a bit more where to add it?
I have set usb 2.0 that has the only one ehci on VirtualBox, added usbs to the filter, but still no usb under hardware :frowning:

Any solution to this problem? I cannot seem to be able to figure it out

I’m searching for more of an answer to this same question - mainly how to get a USB recognized upon a restart of the virtualbox. No such luck so far. I can elaborate on the original poster’s description about USB in VB (maybe) because it was driving me crazy all morning. Wish I had found this while searching earlier.
If you haven’t enabled USB before, then before starting VB, you need to right click on the “box” and hit setting, then USB and “tick” enable USB controller and one of the types (1.0,2.0,3.0). I think it’s backwards compatible so check the highest one. Click on the top icon on the right (add filter) then right-click on the added filter and choose “add filter from device” - if your device doesn’t show up, you must pull then reinsert it in the actual PC. You may have to repeat the first few steps afterward (can’t remember). Now the silly part: start the VB and look under the progress window at the 11 icons followed by “right ctrl”. The 5th one is USB. Hover on it to see if the device comes up - probably not, unless you’re luckier than me. If not, right click on it and choose the device. In my case it is a Husbzb-1 I’m using for Home Assistant so I had to restart the Home Assistant app (NOT the VB). To my amazement I found another person with my exact same problem, but not the restart solution I was looking for. Maybe it describes it better so I copied and pasted from a Reddit post :
“My husbzb-1 only works properly if I plug it in after the guest OS is started and an appropriate device filter is already setup. It appears to be captured otherwise, but doesn’t actually work in hassio (it’s like it captures the base composite device, but not the child USB to serial interfaces.) Of course I have to reboot home assistant after I plug it in, since the zwave and zha are in error states at that point since the ttyUSB devices didn’t exist when the components were loaded.”

My hope is that some more informed person will see this thread and 1) ridicule my comment or 2) have the solution I need - how to get USB devices loaded into VirtualBox automatically upon restart. It’s hard to believe others aren’t having this problem unless it’s such an easy solution that they don’t feel the need to ask

Yes I have this problem as well.
I’m thinking of moving to another virtualization solution like VMWare Workstation.
Or did you find a solution?

Sorry I haven’t posted any updates. I got it working, but wasn’t sure how - it just seemed to start and I’m pretty sure I didn’t change anything. I have since moved to VMWare, specifically the VMWare Workstation Player 17 which I decided to use since I think to load the ESXI server I would have had to format my system and lose Windows. It too didn’t readilly load the USB, but the workaround is to find the “pid” and “vid” of the USB stick using device manager and modify the .vmx file.
Specifically: with the USB attached to the Windows host machine (Vbox isn’t seeing it), open device manager - USB controllers - USB device - details - properties- device IDs. If it says “USB\Vid_0781&Pid_7101” then your vmx line will say usb.autoConnect.device0 = “0x781:0x7101”; you have to open the vmx file with notepad or similar to edit. I found the info on this page, but found it easier to use device manager than regedit - VMware Knowledge Base. Hope it helps. This really helped when I decided to attach a Google Coral which was my intent when moving to VMWare; I just had to add another line for the Coral making it device1.

Correct.

Yes, and you can also refer to the device name instead, if you want.
I find it easy enough to open up the .log file inside the VM folder, look for the text vmx USB: Found device
And get part of the device name to use as a filter.
Like so: usb.autoConnect.device1 = “name:Dresden\ Elektronik\ ConBee\ II”

Good to know that you got it sorted for you. I’m headed in the same direction now.

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Cool. Good to know variations just in case one way doesn’t work. So far I’m happy with VMWare. I had set it up to test and then my VBox setup took a dump. Maybe because I had VMWare on the computer but it wasn’t set up to autoload yet. One thing that gave me a little grief when I added the Coral - I had to let Windows grab the USB on computer restart and disable it in Device Manager. If I didn’t, VMWare gave me constant error messages and Coral restarted every few minutes in Frigate on Home Assistant.