I would like to ask for guidance on how to ideally communicate with a custom USB HID device on MacOS.
Use case
Modify a microphone volume via an external USB HID device.
Question
Can I use DriverKit (HIDDriverKit) for that or I need to use IOKit? I have read something here about audio limitation, but not sure what exactly is not supported.
DriverKit doesn’t support USB devices that manipulate audio or that
communicate wirelessly over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. For those types of
devices, create a kernel extension using IOKit.
— Source
Would DriverKit still work in my case as I am not sending audio streams but controlling volume only?
Many thanks!
Cheers,
Tom
If I understand you correctly, you wouldn't even need to use DriverKit. (from experience: avoid it if you can!)
You can communicate with HID-compliant devices directly from user space processes. User space processes can generally also control the volume on audio devices.
So by far the easiest option would be to have a launch agent which uses IOKit matching as its launch condition so it starts up when your device is connected. Your agent can communicate with the device using the IOHIDManager API to receive events when your buttons are pressed, and then use the regular Core Audio APIs to control volume.
It doesn't have to be a launch agent, incidentally: a regular Cocoa app with a UI can do all of this as well. (And indeed, you may want to show some form of UI as feedback to the user pressing the buttons.)
I am trying to connect a Bluetooth Low Energy enabled MIDI hardware to wirelessly send data to a Windows PC and get it to detect as a MIDI device in Windows. Currently, the device is able to pair with my Windows 10 laptop and I am able to read the incoming data off of it.
The same hardware is configured and working fine as a wireless MIDI device on Mac and iOS devices(which natively supports MIDI over Bluetooth). I am trying to get this feature implemented on Windows(which doesn't support MIDI over Bluetooth, although it was promised in Windows 10).
The device, when is paired, is showing up in the 'Bluetooth devices' section in device manager, I am trying to make this device showing up as a MIDI device in 'Sound, video and game controllers' section.
Any help/resources somebody can provide to help me crack this problem is highly appreciated.
Following is my current thought process to implement this.
Pair the device and read the data off of it. (Already implemented)
Create a virtual MIDI port. (Don't know how to implement this, I am currently checking out rtpMIDI)
Send the MIDI data which was read from the BLE device to the virtual MIDI port. (Still don't know how to implement this)
Any suggestions/comments on the above thought process as I am absolutely new to Windows Driver Development.
I'm working on a cocoa app that detects any USB storage device (flash disk, Smartphone...) connected to the Mac and then use its files. In all the tutorials I've yet read, I have to specify the vendor id and the product id however, I want my app to detect ANY storage USB device. I'm working on Mac os x.
You probably want to use IOKit to inspect all services matching kIOUSBDeviceClassName, and then call IORegistryEntryCreateCFProperties() on each, and inspect the value of kUSBDeviceClass, going by the Device Class Codes described at https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/IOKit/Reference/USBSpec_header_reference/#//apple_ref/doc/constant_group/Device_Class_Codes
I am very new to Mac OS X development. I am implementing a USB based application. In my application When my USB device is connected to the system I need to read a file from USB and upload it to a web server.
I go through Google and some documents but I didn't get any information on this. Can you guys please suggest a best document or sample code to do this?
Probably the best places where to start are
USB Device Interface Guide
Networking & Internet Starting Point
There you can also find links for further information and sample projects
I'd like to modify a USB driver to send and receive USB data over a network.
Take for example, an iMac and a PC. I have an iPod plugged in to my PC (in NY). I want my iMac (in LA) to recognize the iPod as plugged in to a local USB port and be able to communicate with the iPod.
Forget my qualifications, or lack thereof (I have background in web, iOS apps, I've toyed with Java and C).
Where can I get source code for a USB driver for Windows that I can modify? Mac OS?
Any tips or pointers towards accomplishing my goal would be appreciated as well.
It looks like folks are coming up with something close to what you want. If you do decide to roll your own, the USB driver source you asked for is libusb.
On the Mac OS X end, drivers are built up in a stack. What you want to do should be relatively simple (nothing is really simple in kernel land). You need to create a driver that can communicate over ethernet with the PC and looks like a USB device to the driver matching software. Then everything else will happen automatically.
The source code is available for Apple's USB stack. You should also read about the IOKit API and IOKit device driver guidelines and IOKit fundamentals.
Oh yes and you say you have toyed with Java and C. To write device drivers on OS X, you'll need to learn some C++.
I suggest you to go see USBIP project. This is available on Linux and Windows, but not clear for MAC. If you can get a VHCI-Controller driver installed for MAC, we can kick start USBIP for MAC.
Sounds quite like this product, a bit unsure if theirs works over wide-area networks though.
I have a general idea of how I'd go about it, but not any specifics. Basically, I'd use the platform's driver development kit to write a USB device emulator on the client machine. I'd then add a virtual device to that system called "Networked USB Host", or something similar that maintains an open port to listen for communication from the server and passes it on to your virtual USB device. IIRC, the Windows DDK comes with a USB simulation framework that might be able to help you with this.
On the server, you'd have to hook into the USB subsystem to send raw USB packets to the client machine. libpcap and wireshark have USB capturing facilities for that, but I'm not sure if this works with winpcap and the Windows version of wireshark as well.
EDIT: Look at this for cross-platform USB capture alternatives.
You can buy OSR USB learning kit: https://www.osronline.com/custom.cfm?name=index_fullframeset.cfm&pageURL=https://www.osronline.com/store/index.cfm
This is actually small USB device with known interface. Windows Driver Kit (WDK) contains sample KMDF driver for this device: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/driver/wdk/
This is good starting point to learn Windows Drivers development, and USB drivers development specifically. However, it is still far away from your problem solution.
Can't you use some sort of Remote Desktop?