detect hardware changes server side

I need to detect whether a usb storage device has been plugged in or removed. Is this possible with a server-side technology? if not possible directly, then maybe I can write a service that does this and notifies the server. Is this kind of thing possible? I've been looking at nodejs since it has easy websocket api. I'm looking for a cross platform solution

It's possible. Check out these node modules -

https://github.com/schakko/node-usb

https://github.com/voodootikigod/node-serialport