HID Report Type

HID interfaces can be of various subtypes. The subtypes defined within the MSP430 USB API are:

The subtype determines the format of the HID report that will be used.

HID-Datapipe is good for general-purpose communication, implementing an unformatted datastream. On the MSP430 side, you can use send/receive API calls that look very similar to those used with CDC / virtual COM port. USB examples #H0-H6 demonstrate HID-Datapipe.

"Keyboard" and "Mouse" create standard report descriptors for these kinds of devices. However, you still need to write application code that sends reports over these interfaces. See the H7/H8 examples in the USB Developers Package, for examples of mouse/keyboard code.

With a selection of "Custom", you define your own report descriptor. You can do this with the USB-IF's "HID Descriptor Tool" at www.usb.org. (It has a similar name, but a very different function). Paste the output from that tool into the popup field. Then, use HID-Traditional API calls in your MSP430 application, to send/receive reports.