accessing a USB HID

[Cameron Laird]

In article <1142562846.796988.277080 at j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
Serge Orlov <Serge.Orlov at gmail.com> wrote:
>jodansmif at gmail.com wrote:
			.
			.
			.
>> The obstacle our group currently faces is communicating with a
>> microcontroller (ACS USB Servo II) that appears in Windows as a USD
>> HID. Unfortunately, the vendor's sample code is in Visual Basic and
>> Visual C++ which none of our group members have any experience using.
>>
>> My hope is that someone has experience with this type of problem and
>> can point me to some reference material. At this point I'm a bit lost
>> in the morass of USB terminology.
>>
>> While I'm at it... if anyone knows of a better way to approach this
>> problem (serial or parallel microcontroller) or another language with
>> better tools, I'd appreciate that as well. We're just trying to turn
>> several motors on and off while polling some photodiodes and all this
>> HID business seems like unnessary overkill.
>
>After cursory look at the device home page it appears the vendor is
>providing an Active X control. So it looks like you will need to learn
>client side COM programming no matter what language you choose. For
>Python you will need win32 extensions:
>http://starship.python.net/crew/mhammond/win32/Downloads.html
>or you can use ActivePython distribution that comes integrated with it.
>
>Don't be scared by USB HID, it's just a mandatory classification of the
>device under Windows, you don't need to deal with it. Python and COM
>don't look scary:
>http://www.python.org/windows/win32com/QuickStartClientCom.html
>
>  -- Serge.
>

I'm sympathetic.  The hardware manufacturers consistently produce
manuals and documentation that ... puzzle me.

However, Mr. Orlov is absolutely right:  that it's exposed as an
Active X control is good news.  Working with COM through Python is
fun and generally sensible.  You should quickly find yourself able
to write small, sensible code fragments that send signals to the
motors and receive data from the photosensors.  Good luck.