Getting friendly device names in python

Question

I have an 2-port signal relay connected to my computer via a USB serial interface. Using the pyserial module I can control these relays with ease. However, this is based on

Answer 1

I know this is an older post, but I was struggling with it today. Ultimately I used the wmi library for python as I'm on a Windows machine (sorry, I know my answer only applies to Windows, but maybe it'll help someone).

Install the package using pip first:

pip install wmi

then

import wmi
c = wmi.WMI()
wql = "Select * From Win32_USBControllerDevice"
for item in c.query(wql):
    print item.Dependent.Caption

Should result with something like:

USB Root Hub
USB Root Hub
Prolific USB-to-Serial Comm Port (COM9) USB Root Hub
USB Root Hub
USB Composite Device
USB Video Device USB Audio Device
USB Root Hub
...snip...

In this case, you'd have to string parse the Caption to find the COM port. You can also take a look at just the item. Dependent object to see other attributes of the USB device beside Caption that you may find relevant:

instance of Win32_PnPEntity
{
    Caption = "USB Root Hub";
    ClassGuid = "{36fc9e60-c465-11cf-8056-444553540000}";
    ConfigManagerErrorCode = 0;
    ConfigManagerUserConfig = FALSE;
    CreationClassName = "Win32_PnPEntity";
    Description = "USB Root Hub";
    DeviceID = "USB\\ROOT_HUB\\4&32F13EF0&1";
    HardwareID = {"USB\\ROOT_HUB&VID8086&PID3A36&REV0000",     
                "USB\\ROOT_HUB&VID8086&PID3A36", "USB\\ROOT_HUB"};
    Manufacturer = "(Standard USB Host Controller)";
    Name = "USB Root Hub";
    PNPDeviceID = "USB\\ROOT_HUB\\4&32F13EF0&1";
    Service = "usbhub";
    Status = "OK";
    SystemCreationClassName = "Win32_ComputerSystem";
    SystemName = "001fbc0934d1";
};