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In general, what can I do to debug a USB peripheral with onboard memory? Am I able to access/overwrite the onboard memory?

I have a keyboard foot pedal (Kinesis Savant Elite2 triple pedal) that has been misbehaving (more or less bricked). The way it's supposed to work, to the best of my understanding is that:

  • it has some onboard memory that stores its firmware and configuration (a pedals.txt file that maps each of its pedals to a keypress)

  • in "Play Mode" (there is a physical slider), it reads from this onboard memory (likely some sort of caching involved, based on observed behavior- the Play Mode behavior worked fine for a bit even after the onboard memory got corrupted) and converts pedal presses to key presses sent over USB like a USB keyboard

  • in "Program Mode", the keyboard appears as a few-megabytes virtual drive on the system, which can be mounted to access onboard memory (mainly to run and update the config file)

In my case, the USB connects but neither Play nor Program Mode does anything (I think something in the onboard memory has been corrupted). I'm able to find the connected peripheral when using lsusb.

So suppose I want to access the device's onboard memory somehow (I have no idea what's going on under the hood of the v-drive). How could I go about doing that? All I've got is a USB connection of some sort.

rajatsbugs
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  • The only people who can tell you is the manufacturer. There is no one standard way of doing this and no common way to expose internal workings of devices over USB. Chances are you cannot do anything without dismantling the device and finding whatever programming interface it uses. Contact the manufacturer if possible or if not then write it of and dispose of it. – Mokubai Aug 18 '21 at 08:30
  • Thanks, Mokubai. I reached out to the manufacturer and my motivation for asking this question has become obsolete. For anyone else who's got a bricked Kinesis Savant Elite2, the way to reset it is by: - Holding down any 2 of the pedals - Connecting to a computer - Releasing the pedals Should go back to the factory state. However, you *might* need to mount and reformat the v-drive. – rajatsbugs Aug 18 '21 at 16:59
  • then it might be worth slightly reframing your question and posting an answer showing the solution of how to essentially factory reset this particular device. At the very least your question poses a good amount of information on symptoms and behaviour that might be helpful as a starting point for other users who have the same problem. – Mokubai Aug 18 '21 at 17:05

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