I have heard a few people state (including some PB folks) that have said
something to the effect of "applications shoud not have to concern
themselves with talking to USB ports" or something of that general idea.
But applications talk to serial ports, and PB has good support for that. Since
USB ports have been replacing serial ports on PC's, it sure makes sense that
an application programmer should be able to program a USB port more easily
that they now can.
First of all, I believe you if you tell me that applications should not
need to concern themselves with talking to to USB ports, so the question
is, how does an application programmer do this? Who has the "missing link"?
(By the way, please do not refer to the Jan Axelson Book "USB Complete".
It is a good book, but does not answer these questions.)
I will provide a good example. You know those large moving message LED
signs? Now Adaptive Micro systems has a fairly new version called the
BetaBrite "Prism", see www.betabrite.com.
The version of the Prism can get at Sam's club has only a USB port. They
provide messaging software to talk to it, and for those interested in
programming it they (it seems reluctantly, and only if you ask for it) provide
a (mostly undocumented) DLL and a small (undocumented) piece of Visual
Basic code that kinda/sorta shows how to use the DLL. A few of us (that I
have identified from those posting to forums and such) interested in the
Prism have successfully sent messages to a Prism via the USB port.
The Prism is a "USB Bulk" device using the Micrium USB stack in an NXP
LPC2146 microcontroller. The functions I used were USBBULK_Open,
USBBULK_Write, and USBBULK_Close.
Well, someone wrote the DLL for the Prism called "betabriteusb.dll", and PB
has been noted to be very good for writing DLL's, so how would one go
about writing the equivalent functions in PB?
(One answer might be that a person must purchase the Micrium USB stack
and get the documentation, but if that is the answer for most USB devices
then application programmers have little ability to use USB ports for a
reasonable price.)
And what about the more generic USB devices, like USB Flash Drives. Why
shouldn't the application programmer be able to open a file on one of these,
write to it, and close it?
I have searched for API for USBBulk.sys, etc. and not found anything. It
would seem like a list of API's would exist for the generic USB drivers.
something to the effect of "applications shoud not have to concern
themselves with talking to USB ports" or something of that general idea.
But applications talk to serial ports, and PB has good support for that. Since
USB ports have been replacing serial ports on PC's, it sure makes sense that
an application programmer should be able to program a USB port more easily
that they now can.
First of all, I believe you if you tell me that applications should not
need to concern themselves with talking to to USB ports, so the question
is, how does an application programmer do this? Who has the "missing link"?
(By the way, please do not refer to the Jan Axelson Book "USB Complete".
It is a good book, but does not answer these questions.)
I will provide a good example. You know those large moving message LED
signs? Now Adaptive Micro systems has a fairly new version called the
BetaBrite "Prism", see www.betabrite.com.
The version of the Prism can get at Sam's club has only a USB port. They
provide messaging software to talk to it, and for those interested in
programming it they (it seems reluctantly, and only if you ask for it) provide
a (mostly undocumented) DLL and a small (undocumented) piece of Visual
Basic code that kinda/sorta shows how to use the DLL. A few of us (that I
have identified from those posting to forums and such) interested in the
Prism have successfully sent messages to a Prism via the USB port.
The Prism is a "USB Bulk" device using the Micrium USB stack in an NXP
LPC2146 microcontroller. The functions I used were USBBULK_Open,
USBBULK_Write, and USBBULK_Close.
Well, someone wrote the DLL for the Prism called "betabriteusb.dll", and PB
has been noted to be very good for writing DLL's, so how would one go
about writing the equivalent functions in PB?
(One answer might be that a person must purchase the Micrium USB stack
and get the documentation, but if that is the answer for most USB devices
then application programmers have little ability to use USB ports for a
reasonable price.)
And what about the more generic USB devices, like USB Flash Drives. Why
shouldn't the application programmer be able to open a file on one of these,
write to it, and close it?
I have searched for API for USBBulk.sys, etc. and not found anything. It
would seem like a list of API's would exist for the generic USB drivers.
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