Once my embedded device is connected to USB port of my PC, it should trigger an exe as an event. How can I achieve this??
Should I create a service to keep monitoring the USB connector bus or is there any default API's available in Windows to achieve this??
thanks.
A simple exe which is started on connect is not possible. But you can write a service or user mode application which listens for device arrival events. WM_DEVICECHANGE is sent to all (registered) applications with a device interface guid which represents which device is plugged in. You can then use this id with the setupapi to see if its your device.
On receiving that event, you can then start your executable.
Depending on your version of Windows it might be possible with a workaround using a AutoRun.inf file in the root folder of a USB drive. For security reasons this is by default turned off, and in Windows 7 not allowed at all.
To achieve the same effect in a more robust way, you need to create a service that monitors whether your device is connected or not (e.g. iTunesHelper that monitors for connected Apple devices).
The easiest solution is probably a trivial UMDF driver. That's basically a small COM component called when your device is connected.
Related
I am building an application in which I would like to pair a bluetooth low energy device and connect to it.
What should be the typical workflow for this
if the device bluetooth address is known
if the device bluetooth address is not known
Is QBluetoothDeviceDiscoveryAgent the class to do all this? If so, do you need to pair in the OS level (for instance using bluetooth icon in task bar) first or can it be done programmatically?
Thanks!
I believe that ble devices cannot be paired via settings in OS, because they can discover only bt classic devices. In ble devices bonding is not necessary, but sometimes is done for security reasons.
QBluetoothDeviceDiscoveryAgent class is only for discovering devices. For connecting to device is used QLowEnergyController class. For more info I would refer to Qt quides as I have only experience with Qt only with bluetooth classic devices
Previously I have work with Windows Form application to establish some RS232 connection. I used the already provided serial port component (SerialPort), and I was able to establish RS232 communication relatively easy.
Now, I was wondering if there will be something similar in Winodows Form application to establish a USB communication ?
It seems there is this WinUSB API that provides a very low level interfacing with the device.
However, I am not sure how easy will that be? Also, not sure how easy will it be to integrate into Windows Form application ?!
Will there be a simpler version of such USB interface API?
I don't have to stick to Visual Studio. Is there other c++ USB API, besides WinUSB, that is more standard that people use? I would like to develop a GUI API that does some communication over USB. If need be, I can use Python or some other tools if it facilitates the process?
Thanks in advance.
Although USB is a serial protocol, you can't treat USB like a serial port:
It's dependant on what the actual device is. For example a mobile phone, may provide several "endpoints" for USB, one being a serial port to use the phone as a modem, one as a storage device allowing you to transfer photos and music files to/from the phones storage, and as a camera device that you can take photos with. All of these have different behaviour and need a USB driver-plugin to make it behave correctly - these are typically shipped with Windows, and your phone will appear as COM5:, the E: or "Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini" drives and as a camera under the "cameras and scanners".
Of course, you can programmatically open all these devices, but it is done as the device-type that they present as on the inside of windows (so you use serial port functions or file functions or camera functions).
You CAN also write a device driver for a device, if you have sufficient details of how it works.
But there's no real way to "open the port". The USB API is a driver API, not a user-mode API. Here's a page to start from to understand USB drivers:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/windows/hardware/ff540215%28v=vs.85%29.aspx
There is a WinUSB driver, which allows a single application to access a single device, assuming you know how to operate that device.
I'll try to keep this simple.
I have a hub connected to my PC. This hub has several USB interfaces. I'm listening to WM_DEVICECHANGE event and I get the USB interface path. How can I know what port it was connected to? Looking for a non-WMI solution in c++ or c# for a windows environment.
I tried using IOCTL_USB_GET_NODE_CONNECTION_NAME with USB_NODE_CONNECTION_NAME (where USB_NODE_CONNECTION_NAME.NodeName will hold the path to the device) but this only works if the device connected to the port is a hub as well.
Any help will be much appreciated.
The primary issue in C++ is that there is no standard functions for detecting USB ports.
USB Port identification and implementation is a platform specific issue. For example, Linux handles USB ports quite differently than Windows and many embedded systems don't have USB ports.
So you'll have to look for a 3rd party library or find some OS API to use for your platform.
Ideally, I would connect a VeriFone terminal to the Internet via an Ethernet cable and transmit transaction data in real time, but I also want to program the terminal to be able to work in offline mode and save transaction data to a file to transmit later. Is this possible?
I would also like to know how much of the communication is with the processing host vs the merchant services provider's application.
Yes, you can but you will need a SDK for that and what goes on or offline depends on your needs. On a Vx510 device you have access to file system, LAN, dial-up or gprs communication, keyboard, printer, display and a lot more.
I want to find the COM port my device got connected in my vc++ program.
upto now i used to scan all the ports from 0 to 15 and send some command if the reply is suitable to me i can confirm that it is the port i am finding.
But this is Taking a lot of time.
anyother solution???
The serial API does not provide for any of the sort of identification that you seem to desire so the only choice that you have is to poll he various ports. If the device is a USB device, you may be able to garnish clues from the friendly name associated with that device (see How do I get the friendly name of a COM port in Windows?).