How do I program a driver for a USB device for windows platform?

Question

I am looking for a device that reads wiring voltages via a USB interface and returns the data. How would I go about programming something to interpret this data and what language would I use?

edit: If it helps, this project is to develop a digital tachometre for older engines that don't support a comprehensive ODB2 data port. Therefore, it will read voltages on a DC circuit and have an accurate graphical interface. I have absolutely no idea where to start with all this but am determined to make it work! it's for windows.

Answer 1

Cheat and use libusb. I did this for a project I've been working on for a while and wrote a C++/wxWidgets app to handle the data.

I've been thinking recently of re-writing the app on the PC in wxPython though as it's much faster for GUI development.

How you want to display / log the data? There are a lot of options available. You can do some pretty cool stuff (easily) with the OpenGL capabilities of wxWidgets whether it's 2D or 3D data representation.

Answer 2

If you can I would suggest using a library like libusb, as kris and Jon Cage have suggested.

If libusb isn't going to suit your needs and you're developing for Windows you should have a look at the software that Jungo provides. Again, this moves the usb software into user space rather than requiring Windows kernel development. (edit 3: Ilya points out in the comment that Jungo is also available for Linux)

If you must do some kernel development (either Windows or Linux) then C is pretty well the only option you have. Investigate this book by Rubini for linux development. For windows driver development I can recommend this book by Oney. But I'd investigate the libusb option in preference to the driver development in both cases.

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Btw. If all you are interested in is being able to measure voltages on a usb device (and writing the code isn't important) there are many products out there that will do that for you. Take a look at some of the offerings from National Instruments. These will deal with the hard work of usb and the data acquisition and give you a nice programming interface to use in your application.

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(edit 2) There are also some usb-serial chips (eg. these) that can be interfaced directly to an embedded processor usig only a uart. Typically these come with drivers.

Answer 3

Have a look at libusb. It is available for both Linux and Windows.