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USB HID Interface

The USB HID module provides a generic interface to HID (Human Interface Devices) USB products. The USB HID module should allow you to control many devices that utilize this kind of USB driver that require simple exchanging of information otherwise not possible within RoboRealm.

Note that only HID devices will appear in the dropdown and that not all USB devices use the HID class.

Interface

Instructions

1. Settings - Select the device you wish to control from the device dropdown. The name of the device may have human readable words but often may only contain the VID (vendor ID) and PID (product ID) of the device. If you are not sure which entry is the appropriate device check with the manufacturer to find out the appropriate VID and PID to use.

2. Console - if the device supports reading you will start to see a large amount of numbers scrolling by in the console. This shows the current values being read from the device and provides a log of the ongoing communication activities. The red text are characters received from the device while the green text are characters sent by RoboRealm to the device. To copy the log click on the Copy button, likewise to clear it click on the Clear button. Note that the console log only shows several lines at a time with older information being discarded.
You can switch the output to various formats for better viewing:

ASCII - shows new data as ASCII characters. Any character outside of printable characters will be represented with a \ followed by the actual integer data that was read

Decimal - shows new data as sets of single byte integer numbers

Hexadecimal - shows new data as sets of hexadecimal numbers (base 16 numbers, e.g. FF)

Short Binary - shows new data as binary numbers with prefix 0's removed

Binary - shows new data as sets of single byte binary numbers

3. Send Now - often you need to quickly test the device by sending a certain sequence of characters. To do so just type in the character sequence (using for carriage return, [image_count] for variables, etc.) and click on Send Now. The text will be parsed and sent to the device and the response will then appear in the console log. Note that this is different from the send sequence which will be sent each time the module is encountered in the processing pipeline. The Send Now button is a manual testing mechanism meant for debugging purposes. Also note that the returned text will be parsed by the Receive Sequence so that you can test your parsing code and see if the variables have been created. Use the Watch Variables module to see those variables being created.

4. Refresh Rate - to slow the scrolling of the numbers select a different refresh rate for the console. This will just slow down how quickly RoboRealm reads information from the device.

5. Initialization Sequence - The initialization data sequence sends the provided string to the device on initialization of communication. You may want to use this to command the receiving device into a specific mode ready for communication with RoboRealm. This initialization sequence is sent each time the communication is reset. This happens when you click on the "Stop" button in this interface, change one of the above parameters (Baud, Port, etc) or when the RoboRealm starts running for the first time. It is NOT sent when the Run button in the main RoboRealm interface is toggled. See the Text Formats page for additional information about the text string format.

6. Send sequence - Used to enter commands sent per pipeline loop (i.e. image processed) by RoboRealm. You can use this sequence to transmit variables created by other RoboRealm modules to the USB device. Each time an image is captured and processed the USB HID module will interpret the Send Sequence text and send the result to the device. See the Text Formats page for additional information about the text string format.

7. Enable - Allows you to temporarily disable sending text to the device while performing edits. Note that the Send Sequence textarea will turn red to indicate this setting.

8. Send Rate - Some devices cannot handle rapid data streams. Use this dropdown to select how quickly you want the data to be sent. At AFAP (As Fast As Possible) the data will be sent out about 30 times a second (this assumes a camera running at 30 fps).

9. Send only on change - If your data does need to be sent out to your device every iteration through the processing pipeline loop this selection will prevent the same data from being sent to the device that was last sent. This is also an elegant way to reduce the data bandwidth to the device if your sequence does not change rapidly.

10. Receive sequence - used to receive and parse text send from the device. The text string is matched against the incoming bytes. When a match is found variables are added into RoboRealm for use in other modules. Reading into variables just requires adding in a variable at the appropriate spot within the receive string similar to the scanf routine in C/C++. The Receive sequence works similar to an expect string, i.e. you need to specify patterns that match the incoming text and substitute the areas that need to be fed into variables with the [ variable_nane ] format. Note that even if you are missing one space or newline the patter will not match and the variable will be zero or blank. See the Text Formats page for additional information about the text string format.

Example

The above interface screenshot shows controlling the Dream Cheeky USB Missile launcher. The launcher normally responds with 8 zeros that indicate that an extreme position has been met. Try connecting the device to your computer and send a \2 using the Send Now text box. Be sure to have the \0 typed in quickly afterwards to stop the motion. Likewise try \1 or \4 or \8 to move the launcher around. See how the commands you type in appear as green in the console?

Here is a robofile that shows how to use the USB HID module to prevent the launcher from moving past its limits and how to use the read sequence to read the information coming back from the launcher.

See Also


Dream Cheeky Missile Launcher
Serial

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