you might also be interested to read Universal Serial Bus - the easy way
(4 pages) and virtual com port drivers described at:
http://www.dlpdesign.com/usb-easy-way.pdf
Best regards
Viktoras
Graham Samuel wrote:
Thanks Phil for that insight. I had a quick look at your link and
staggered back, appalled. It reminded me of what a gentleman named
Robert Lipe said to me on another list when he thought I was trying to
reverse engineer the USB interface of my device (maybe I was - I had
not considered Rev in the equation at that stage and had even less
idea what I was doing). His advice started off:
Reverse engineering USB protocols from scratch is possible, but only
if you pass the entrance exam:
Repeatedly jam a fork into your left eyeball. If, after about 40
jabs, your
thought is "man, this is great - my right eyeball needs a piece of
this action",
then reverse engineering USB protocols just might be your calling.
I think I will just go back to sleep on this unless and until I can
find out something more about the device I wanted to interface with. I
suppose that I was seduced by the enormous number of USB-connected
devices that surround me - right here where I'm sitting I can count 2
digital cameras, a printer, a scanner, a hard disk, an ADSL modem, a
keyboard, three mice, a GPS training device, a SatNav, an Elgato TV
receiver, a webcam, a digital storage card reader and a data key. Who
knows what else I might find if I go into the other rooms in the
house? And to think that the people who engineered them all had to
write drivers for PCs and Macs, and (no doubt) they are all different.
Compared to that, Rev programming seems so easy, doesn't it?
Back to the day job.
Graham
On Tue, 04 Mar 2008 09:55:31 -0800, Phil Davis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
Hi Graham,
Graham Samuel wrote:
--- snip ---
It looks to me as if my wish to create better software for it (on a
Mac primarily) is pretty much a dead end - although if I can get hold
of a serial-to-USB converter I might be able to experiment a bit.
BTW I wonder why Rev has never entered the world of USB - I don't know
about Linux, but for PCs and Macs, USB appears to be a completely
standard interface and one which has been mandatory on all models of
machine for many years. There must by a USB API for these operating
systems - is it much more of a challenge to RunRev than the many other
things they've had to incorporate? I do believe there is at least some
level of demand.
Graham
You're certainly correct that USB is well-defined standard, evidenced by
the many uses of it on all computing platforms and beyond. And as you
might imagine, the USB standard is necessarily complex to do all it
does.
Here's a good introduction to USB:
http://www.beyondlogic.org/usbnutshell/
I manage development of a system that uses a USB HID input/output
device. The device has 9 backlit input keys whose lighted states and key
events are managed/handled by a Rev-based app. The Rev app has no direct
interface with the device driver; it interacts with the driver via a
pass-through background app that provides a socket interface to the Rev
app. On the Mac, the driver is actually a custom-built Kernel Extension
(.kext) file; on Windows it's the Win32 version of the libUSB
open-source library ( http://libusb-win32.sourceforge.net/ ). I imagine
there may be better ways to implement this, but it is what it is. :o)
It's the way we found we could make it work when it was initially
needed.
I know I haven't answered any questions here, but maybe it gives a
little perspective.
--
Phil Davis
PDS Labs
Professional Software Development
http://pdslabs.net
_______________________________________________
use-revolution mailing list
use-revolution@lists.runrev.com
Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your
subscription preferences:
http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
_______________________________________________
use-revolution mailing list
use-revolution@lists.runrev.com
Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription
preferences:
http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
