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USB Robot Arm and hidapi.dll

Posted: Tue Nov 29, 2011 12:25 am
by akj
I have bought and constructed the Robot Arm with USB PC Interface as shown at http://www.maplin.co.uk/robotic-arm-kit ... ace-266257
and now wish to program it's movements using PureBasic. The best library to use for this seems to be the Human Interface Device library hidapi.dll as described at
http://javahidapi.googlecode.com/hg-his ... README.txt
and http://www.signal11.us/oss/hidapi/hidap ... __API.html
But hidapi.dll seems to require building using the WDK (Windows Driver Kit) and I have been unable to achieve this. Does anyone know where I can find a pre-built copy of hidapi.dll for Window 7 32-bit (and hopefully also 64-bit)?
Alternatively, are there any other suitable available libraries, apart from the hard-to-use hid.dll from Microsoft?

Re: USB Robot Arm and hidapi.dll

Posted: Tue Nov 29, 2011 3:23 am
by IdeasVacuum
That looks like a very interesting bit of kit 8)

The project on the github site is written in C, so I have compiled it for you (for Windows). I have not studied the files so I do not know if there are any specific compile options required, but the dll was created without errors or warnings:

http://www.professorcad.co.uk/PB_Stuff/hidapi.dll
http://www.professorcad.co.uk/PB_Stuff/hidapi.lib

Edit: It also creates a console exe file hidtest.exe, which produces a list of USB devices.
http://www.professorcad.co.uk/PB_Stuff/hidtest.exe