Possible to turn a an XPe box into a USB Device (Test & Measurement class)?

[p27182]

Hey folks-

I reckon my question is more windows XPe related than LabVIEW related, but it wouldn't surprise me if someone here has dealt with, or considered this idea before in this arena.

My googling has turned up very little... but I want to know how feasible it may be to turn a box running XPe into a USB device (test and measurement class) that can be recognized by a remote hosting computer - all the while still being able to host USB devices on other USB ports itself for USB DAQ.

Even if someone was willing to point me in the right direction, to documentation or another forum it would be very much appreciated!

Thanks

-pat

[asbo]

Not that I have any particular insight, but I'm interested in what kind of interface would be implemented between the host and XPe unit. Would it essentially look like the summation of all the USB hardware it is hosting itself?

[p27182]

No, the XPe piece is running a LV executable that utilizes a USB based DAQ amoungst other things, I'm really just looking to use a USB cable for serial communications just like a 232 hookup so that the system can be just as versatile as a common Test & Measurement class USB device. (partially because rs232 is kind of on its way out with many computers sold without the serial DB9 ports.)

-pat

[JamesMc86]

Hi Pat,

I am no expert on this topic but I would expect that at the best this will be very hard and at worst impossible. First you need an XPe box with a USB slave interface (I don't think you can use the standard USB ports for this) and then you need to figure out the software side. I would be suprised if XPe has the hooks for this. Take this with a pinch of salt as I am not familiar with these topics just my 2p.

The reason I post is to suggest that if your XPe box has the serial port then can you just provide it with a USB-232 converter on the socket. They are pretty cheap and will be much easier to program with the simple serial VISA VIs.

Cheers,

James Mc

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

I am no expert on this topic but I would expect that at the best this will be very hard and at worst impossible. First you need an XPe box with a USB slave interface (I don't think you can use the standard USB ports for this) and then you need to figure out the software side. I would be suprised if XPe has the hooks for this. Take this with a pinch of salt as I am not familiar with these topics just my 2p.

There is the hardware limitation for sure. A device oriented USB connector should be a USB-B connector not an USB-A connector. I haven't seen a single computer hardware with USB-B connectors so far. Electrically there is not really any difference but the software stack is again different. I'm pretty sure that it would be possible to write a USB device stack for XP but that involves going into kernel mode. Maybe, just maybe, it could be possible to emulate the device stack in user space on top of a library like libUSB or the native Windows USB device driver API, but that only would alleviate the device driver debugging issue, not the whole trouble of implementing a valid USB device stack.

[ShaunR]

Hey folks-

I reckon my question is more windows XPe related than LabVIEW related, but it wouldn't surprise me if someone here has dealt with, or considered this idea before in this arena.

My googling has turned up very little... but I want to know how feasible it may be to turn a box running XPe into a USB device (test and measurement class) that can be recognized by a remote hosting computer - all the while still being able to host USB devices on other USB ports itself for USB DAQ.

Even if someone was willing to point me in the right direction, to documentation or another forum it would be very much appreciated!

Thanks

-pat

A simpler (and proven) solution is to use the XPe box as a host for the USB devices and connect to it using the network interface.