Human interface device

HIDs for Output

Computer monitor Refreshable braille display Loudspeakers Headset Haptic technology

Common HIDs

Keyboard & Refreshable braille display Pointing devices: Mouse, Trackball, Touchpad, Pointing stick, Light pen Touchscreen Magnetic Stripe Reader Graphics tablet Joystick, Gamepad, Analog stick Webcam Fingerprint Scanner

Less common HIDs

Driving simulator devices and flight simulator devices have HIDs such as gear sticks, steering wheels and pedals. Wired glove (Nintendo Power Glove) Dance pad Wii Remote Surface computing device Apple's Sudden Motion Sensor (SMS) device in Macs.

A human interface device or HID is a type of computer device that interacts directly with, and most often takes input from, humans and may deliver output to humans. The term "HID" most commonly refers to the USB-HID specification. The term was coined by Mike Van Flandern of Microsoft when he proposed that the USB committee create a Human Input Device class working group. The working group was renamed as the Human Interface Device class at the suggestion of Tom Schmidt of DEC because the proposed standard supported bi-directional communication.

HIDs for Output

Common HIDs

Less common HIDs

The HID standard was adopted primarily to enable innovation in PC input devices and to simplify the process of installing such devices. Prior to the introduction of the HID concept, devices usually conformed to strictly defined for mouse, keyboards and joysticks; for example, the standard mouse-protocol at the time supported relative X- and Y-axis data and binary input for up to two buttons, with no legacy support. All hardware innovations necessitated either overloading the use of data in an existing protocol or the creation of custom device drivers and the evangelization of a new protocol to developers. By contrast, all HID-defined devices deliver self-describing packages that may contain any number of data types and formats. A single HID driver on a computer parses data and enables dynamic association of data I/O with application functionality, which has enabled rapid innovation and development, and prolific diversification of new human-interface devices.

A working committee with representatives from several prominent companies developed the HID standard. The list of participants appears in the "Device Class Definition for Human Interface Devices (HID)" document. The concept of a self-describing extensible protocol initially came from Mike Van Flandern and Manolito Adan while working on a project named "Raptor" at Microsoft, and independently from Steve McGowan, who worked on a device protocol for Access Bus while at Forte. After comparing notes at a Consumer Game Developer Conference, Steve and Mike agreed to collaborate on a new standard for the emerging Universal Serial Bus (USB).

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Wikipedia