Access Strucuture Sensor via OpenNI 2 from UWP App targeting Windows 10 - c++

Question

I'd like to access the Structure Sensor (https://structure.io) via OpenNI 2 (https://github.com/occipital/openni2) from an UWP App running on a Windows 10 Desktop.
The Setup
For this very reason I created a Windows Runtime Component (Universal Windows) in C++ besides my actual UWP App. This component exports several functions basically miming the initialization behavior of one of the samples in above OpenNI Github repo.
I extended the code to also iterate through all available devices:
// Initialize OpenNI
Status rc = OpenNI::initialize();
if (rc != STATUS_OK)
{
logError("Initialize failed + " + std::string(OpenNI::getExtendedError()));
return false;
}
// Get all attached sensors supported by OpenNI
Array<DeviceInfo> deviceList;
OpenNI::enumerateDevices(&deviceList);
for (int i = 0; i < deviceList.getSize(); i++) {
logInfo(deviceList[i].getName());
logInfo(deviceList[i].getUri());
}
// Actual open device
Device device;
rc = device.open(deviceList[0].getUri());
if (rc != STATUS_OK)
{
logError("Error = " + to_string(rc));
logError("Couldn't open device " + std::string(OpenNI::getExtendedError()));
return false;
}
The Problem
Calling above code from my UWP app through the Windows Runtime Component is successful when initializing OpenNI and enumerating over all available devices:
[INFO] PS1080
[INFO] \\?\usb#vid_1d27&pid_0600#13261#{c3b5f022-5a42-1980-1909-ea72095601b1}
Actually Opening the device via device.open is the actual problem (Error 1 = STATUS_ERROR)
[ERROR] Error = 1
[ERROR] Couldn't open device Could not open "\\?\usb#vid_1d27&pid_0600#13261#{c3b5f022-5a42-1980-1909-ea72095601b1}": USB device not found!
I'm also under the impression that above error message is a bit misleading, as the actual message when having no device attached is:
[ERROR] Error = 1
[ERROR] Couldn't open device DeviceOpen using default: no devices found
I already tried to add a USB device capability to the package mainifest without any success.
<DeviceCapability Name="usb">
<Device Id="vidpid:1D27 0600">
<!--<Function Type="classId:ff * *" />-->
<Function Type="name:vendorSpecific"/>
</Device>
</DeviceCapability>
I also verified that above code is working when directly building a classic C++ program without targeting UWP at all.
I would be very happy for any direction/hint you can provide me with

Answer 1

The Solution
Microsoft's UWP policy simply doesn't allow access to USB devices. But you can workaround that by grant the UWP AppContainer Process access to the Structure IO sensor.
Some manual work is required though:
Open the registry editor and go to the USB entry of the Structure IO sensor HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Enum\USB\VID_1D27&PID_0600
Uncollapse this node and right click on the node below this one and copy the whole key in to clipboard. The last digit is very important here and differs from machine to machine (e.g. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Enum\USB\VID_1D27&PID_0600\13261)
Copy this key into following registry file where the brackets are. The following registry modification basically allows every UWP app access to the structure I/O sensor.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Enum\USB\VID_1D27&PID_0600\13261]
"Security"=hex:1,0,4,90,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,14,0,0,0,2,0,60,0,4,0,0,0,0,0,14,0,0,0,0,10,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,5,12,0,0,0,0,0,18,0,0,0,0,10,1,2,0,0,0,0,0,5,20,0,0,0,20,2,0,0,0,0,14,0,0,0,0,10,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,5,B,0,0,0,0,0,18,0,0,0,0,10,1,2,0,0,0,0,0,F,2,0,0,0,1,0,0,0
Modify the following batch script to point to the full path(!) of above registry file. This script is needed to modify the registry with the security string. This is only allowed by Window's SYSTEM account. That's why we need to create a task for that.
call schtasks /create /RU SYSTEM /SC ONCE /TN DeviceAC /TR "reg import c:\full\path\to\registry\file.reg" /ST 00:00
call schtasks /run /tn DeviceAC
call schtasks /delete /tn DeviceAC /f
Run the above batch script with Administrator privileges
After successfully executing the script, make sure there's a new entry called "Security" below you node from 2.
If the sensor is already connected to your PC you'll need to reconnect it.
Now the code from my Question above should work :)
You'll find a detailed read on how to solve this problem here:
https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/iot/Samples/CustomDeviceAccessor