Pi Zero W USB Proxy

I'm not sure exactly what to call it, but here's a little something I set up this weekend.

On my Linux desktop, I have occasional problems where being stopped at the debugger prompt for a plugged-in USB device hoses the whole computer. The problem waxes and wanes but on a particularly frustrating day I decided that maybe a Pi was the answer to the problem.

Using screen I can access the USB-serial devices on the pi, and using sshfs I can access the files. If the whole pi freezes, I can just reboot it with essentially no harm done.

I selected a Pi Zero W with a Zero4U hub and Adafruit MiniPiTFT 1.14" attached. To a base raspbian lite system I added some software, including tio, udiskie, screen, and Adafruit Blinka; enabled ssh access and disk mounting by the pi user, and set up GNU screen and my custom script for the LCD which is (confusingly) also called screen.

The screen shows information about each of the 4 USB connectors. In brackets "S" is shown if there is a serial device; "D" is shown if there's a partitioned disk, "d" if there's an unpartitioned disk; and "M" is shown if it is mounted. After that, the device name is shown.

Automount can be toggled with the B button (silk screen 23) and any non-mounted disks can be mounted with the A button (silk screen 24)

So far I've only used it lightly, but if it prevents a single crash of my desktop, it will be worth it.

This isn't a detailed guide so a lot of the setup is omitted. However, here are the scripts that are the essential parts:

Jeff Epler's blog

Pi Zero W USB Proxy