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Communication to USB device

Question asked by blackhorse01 on May 20, 2010
Latest reply on Dec 6, 2013 by leomag

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I have a custom USB device and want to control it thru Vee program. In the Device Manager I found Device instance "USB\VID_1CE2&PID_0002\5&11DAD59D&0&1" . I enter in the VISA address of instrument properties "
USB0::1CE2::0002::11DAD59D::0:INSTR" or "USB0::7494::0002::11DAD59D::0:INSTR". All give me error 801 when communicated with this device. Please help
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changmeikuan May 20, 2010 6:19 PM
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If VEE Instrument Manager can detect the device, before changing any of the instrument properties, right click on the device, select Create Direct I/O Object and drag-drop to your program. Add some transaction to the instrument e.g. *IDN?, it should work.

Or, you may go to Agilent Connection Expert to look for the device Visa Address and use it in VEE.

Hope these helps
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klinn May 28, 2010 12:36 PM
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I have a similar problem to blackhorse01 and have tried the suggestions of changmeikuan with no luck. I am trying to USB interface to a custom board and have the Vid and Pid. I even have the VB6 program that will interface via USB to the board, send commands and receive data back.
I tried using the Import Library function which gave me an error in the header file of "APWINUSB_API is an unknown data type. The entire line it refers to in the header file is "APWINUSB_API BOOLEAN bCloseDriver(void);".
Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?
Thanks!
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gojoh May 28, 2010 2:34 PM
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I/O Libraries (VISA) and VEE Instrument Manager will only be able to communicate with USB devices conforming to the USBTMC (USB Test&Measurement Class) protocol. There is a reason your USB mouse, printer and other USB devices doesnt show up in Connection Expert and VEE Instrument Manager.

In your case the right direction is to import and use the DLL functions. However, the defintion file must not contain any user-defined datatypes, macros etc. Return and parameter data types must be defined using fundamental data types. Usually you have to modify a 'normal' header file slightly into a VEE definition file.
Search for 'defintion file' in VEE help for more information.
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klinn May 28, 2010 3:45 PM
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Thanks for the reply Gojoh. I did a search for 'definition file' and didn't come up with much that made sense to me. I did find a post about header conversion from Shawn dated Nov 2008 that talked about data types but I couldn't figure out exactly what the data types would look like. I am not a programmer by trade, hence the use of VEE .
Shawn also referenced C Programming 101 and Windows Programming 101 documents, but I couldn't find them.
I would have to post this on the start to a holiday weekend (here in the States). Probably won't get many replies until people are back next week. Any other help would be appreciated.
-Kurt
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changmeikuan May 30, 2010 6:40 AM
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In case if you couldn't locate the relevant help file page. It is Tell Me About > User-Defined Functions > Compiled Functions > The Definition Files.
Try to search the header file (.h), if there is any definition for APWINUSB_API, then replace it with the actual data type e.g. Int64 or etc.
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blackhorse01 Jun 2, 2010 1:59 AM
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My USB device is not a USBTMC, so I need to use .NET reference to send a command and read a response from USB device. Does anyone have a sample Vee program that I can learn to use DLL and send/read from USB device.
Thanks
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changmeikuan Jun 2, 2010 10:39 PM
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You will have to add reference to your USB .NET DLL, then call the DLL function using either .NET Operation Builder, from FOB or Formula, depending on your preferences.

Some getting started steps in help file Tell Me About > .NET Framework pages e.g. Agilent VEE Pro and the .NET Framework, Importing a Namespace into Agilent VEE Pro and etc.

Some example is available in \example\DotNet.

Hope this helps

-mk
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klinn Jun 14, 2010 1:54 PM
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After much, blood, sweat, and tears, I finally got communication with my USB board. Had to have the driver rewritten with the ifdef block changed from declspec to cdecl. Don't really know what that means so I won't try to explain it. Some of you driver writers out there can probably explain it. Also had to have the definitions changed from references of BOOL to VEE_BOOL and the instances of LPVOID to BYTE *.
In the Vee program, I had to convert my text command I was sending, into a character array, and then convert from char to ASCII integers to input it to the call send function to USB.
To read the respond from the USB port on my board, I had to format a blank array of the size of the integers to be received. This went into the Call to read the USB as ASCII integers. convert to characters, and sum the characters into a text string. WHEW!
I may have to tweak the code as in some situations I won't know the length of the integer array to read back so I can see some changes coming.
If anyone has an easier way to do this I would be open to it. But since I got it going now I probably won't look back. I've attached an image to show the values passed.
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- USB Call Function.bmp1.6 MB
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- leomag @ klinn on Dec 6, 2013 4:43 AM
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  Hi Klinn,
  
  Could you share your vee usb interface? The screenshot is not very clear.
  
  Thanks and regards,
  Leomag
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blackhorse01 Sep 23, 2010 8:44 AM
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I found this device E5813A Networked 5-Port USB Hub. Can we connect our non USBTCM device to this USB Hub and I can use Vee program to control our device without go thru dotNet or some kind of stuffs. THANKS
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klinn Sep 23, 2010 9:21 AM
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Blackhorse01,
The 5 port USB device will work to route access to the non-USBTCM device from the computer but I believe you will still need a driver and header file for the Vee program to talk to the device. The device manufacturer may be able to help you with this.
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