The PSVR is controlled by the processing unit, which itself is controlled by computer via USB.
The PSVR acts as a USB device, exposing both normal and some HID interfaces.
Be wearly of the library you use to connect to HID interfaces on USB devices like the PSVR. Many operating systems (including Mac, Linux, and Windows) have kernel drivers which automatically take exclusive access to all HID interfaces as they are connected. This means that the only way to connect to HID interfaces is to use platform-specific HID APIs (such as IOKit).
There are workarounds for this. I've found that I could get it to work
on Linux if I execute my program under root. I've seen libraries
with special code to detach the kernel drivers from each USB interface needed.
I personally haven't had much success with that though.
Note that libusb also suffers from this problem.
I've found that the HIDAPI library works well for this, although I had to maintain a custom fork to work around an issue on Mac.
Note that only some of the USB interfaces exposed by the PSVR are HID interfaces. Not all HID libraries support normal USB interfaces.
Every USB device exposes one or more numbered interfaces. These interfaces can be thought of as individual IO streams. In the PSVR, there is a USB interface for each different piece of functionality.
| Interface number | Purpose | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 3D audio | |
| 1 | Audio control | |
| 2 | Mic audio | |
| 3 | Chat audio | |
| 4 (HID) | Sensor readouts | Sends headset state to the computer |
| 5 (HID) | Control | |
| 6 | Video stream H.264 | Probably for social screen |
| 7 | Bulk in | |
| 8 (HID) | Control 2 |