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I'm building a small camera with my raspberry pi zero. As part of this I've made an enclosure with an external USB port, which is hardwired onto the pi.

I would like to add an if statement to the start of my python script to ensure that a USB device is plugged in. The port will never change as it is hardwired, and I am not trying to detect a specific USB stick. Just that the port is occupied.

Further, is there any way to ensure it is a USB storage device?

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    If you were working in a (bash) shell environment I'd be tempted to do something with lsusb(8) - which suggests the information may also be available from the /proc or /sys parts of the file-system...
    – SlySven
    Commented Apr 23, 2018 at 12:38
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    My current method involves using a similar method, I just make the lsusb call from python, capture the result and parse out the desired port. Would prefer a purely python method.
    – Charlie Miller
    Commented Apr 23, 2018 at 17:35

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Test for the existence of /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-1.2 (or 1.3, 1.4, 1.5 which are the numbers of the 4 A-type connectors).

You can also parse the output of lsusb -t. You will note that this also includes the device class, which will be "Mass Storage" for a storage device.

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  • Exactly what I was searching for. Thankyou!
    – Charlie Miller
    Commented Apr 27, 2018 at 1:54
  • Starting at 1.2 because the hub is 1.0 and the Ethernet is 1.1? I'll try this as soon as I get home from work. Thanks again!
    – Charlie Miller
    Commented Apr 27, 2018 at 2:41

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