Mark F
October 13th, 2002, 12:55 PM
Welcome to Girder!
The answer is, "It depends." :)
If the USB attached device looks like a serial port to Windows software, the serial plugin may work with it. If it looks like a custom USB device, you'll need to write a Girder plugin or find someone to write it for you.
If you plan on using something like the FTDI chip (http://www.ftdichip.com/), they provide Windows drivers that fit into the serial stack. They have a lot of partners that provide evaluation kits (http://www.ftdichip.com/FTEval.htm) including kits that have PIC micros on them. Since you don't say what type of class this is for (electrical, mechanical, software, etc.), I don't know which part of the project YOU are responsible for and which part you can get help with.
The USB protocol is complicated and requires a lot of software and/or firmware. There is software and/or firmware in the device (the PIC and USB engine) and there is software on the host (windows drivers and application). Writing and debugging all of this yourself would be an enormous undertaking for the time period of a single semester. Leveraging an evaluation kit which includes a USB engine and Windows COM (serial) drivers would seem to be a logical way to reduce the risk. Then you would need to build the device hardware to attach to the eval board and write/debug the PIC firmware. The rest of the software would be "off the shelf".
I hope this helps a bit. :)
The answer is, "It depends." :)
If the USB attached device looks like a serial port to Windows software, the serial plugin may work with it. If it looks like a custom USB device, you'll need to write a Girder plugin or find someone to write it for you.
If you plan on using something like the FTDI chip (http://www.ftdichip.com/), they provide Windows drivers that fit into the serial stack. They have a lot of partners that provide evaluation kits (http://www.ftdichip.com/FTEval.htm) including kits that have PIC micros on them. Since you don't say what type of class this is for (electrical, mechanical, software, etc.), I don't know which part of the project YOU are responsible for and which part you can get help with.
The USB protocol is complicated and requires a lot of software and/or firmware. There is software and/or firmware in the device (the PIC and USB engine) and there is software on the host (windows drivers and application). Writing and debugging all of this yourself would be an enormous undertaking for the time period of a single semester. Leveraging an evaluation kit which includes a USB engine and Windows COM (serial) drivers would seem to be a logical way to reduce the risk. Then you would need to build the device hardware to attach to the eval board and write/debug the PIC firmware. The rest of the software would be "off the shelf".
I hope this helps a bit. :)