[libhid-discuss] cross-platform capabilities?

[Xiaofan Chen]

On 4/5/07, Charles Lepple <clepple at ghz.cc> wrote:
>
> >> At the moment, there is no Win32 backend, but you might have some luck
> >> with libusb-win32 and libhid.
> >
> > That will be a problem. By default Windows will claim the HID device.
> > It is possible to unbind the hid driver and use libusb-win32 device
> > driver instead but this is not so convenient. If we use the libusb-win32
> > filter driver, the system will hang since the HID driver is not detached.
> >
> > It seems to me the best is to use the native Windows HID API.
>
> As with the OS X approach, the only major hurdle is the time necessary to
> write the code (both for the infrastructure to select between the
> different backends, and for the non-libusb access methods).
>

The good news is that Stephan Meyer may want to do it in his
next version of libusb-win32. See the attached post from the
libusb-win32 mailing list.

On 4/11/07, Stephan Meyer wrote:
> > On 4/10/07, Xiaofan wrote:
> > The thing is that you need to uninstall the kernel HID driver and
> > use the libusb-win32 device driver for this kind of HID device. This
> > significantly reduces the usability of libusb-win32 for HID device
> > under Windows. Yet many USB device disguise them as HID device
> > just to avoid writing a device driver.
> >
> > Just wondering if it is possible to use an alternative backend
> > (Windows HID apli) and make libusb a wrapper on top of it.
> > I understand then it should perhaps be called libhid-win32 then.
>
> This sounds like a great idea! I'll add a native HID backend to the
> next version of the DLL. It should be possible to implement most of
> libusb's features on top of Windows' hid.dll such as open, close,
> interrupt-read/write and basic control messages. The rest can be
> emulated/simulated.
>


Regards,
Xiaofan