generic usb hid driver in windows 8?

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photon
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue Dec 03, 2013 11:03 am

generic usb hid driver in windows 8?

Post by photon »

I've searched over the forum for a while now and haven't quite found a solution for my problem. I'm not a developer per se, i'm a designer trying to use a SpaceNavigator with a platform called Max/MSP http://cycling74.com/. In this platform there is an object "hi" that outputs the generic USB HUD values from any device. Under OSX, this object does an excellent job of giving me roll, spin, tilt, pan, push, pull, etc values on HID channels 14-22 as positive and negative values off of zero for each parameter. No special drivers necessary. I've recently started moving over to a windows platform (Windows 8 64bit) and have not been able to get similar data from the SpaceNavigator. On a clean install of windows without any drivers installed all I get from the device is a very large single value on channel 20 that I can't really make sense of. I assume its some sort of bitwise control? After installing the 3Dconnexion drivers I get the same results.

Is there any driver available for the SpaceNavigator that will give me individual USB HID channels by function? Or some other way to receive generic USB HID data from the device?

thanks in advance for any assistance.
photon
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue Dec 03, 2013 11:03 am

Re: generic usb hid driver in windows 8?

Post by photon »

I'm still fighting this issue with little success.

I'm running the latest software and drivers: xWare 10.0.19, WinCore 17.0.29, SpaceNav firmware 4.04

The standard software and application profiles seem to work as advertised (Scrolling in Chrome, etc.) Yet all I ever see coming from the device in a raw HID stream is indecipherable: Ch 0, 4, 8, 12, 16, 20 respond to device movements by continually counting signed integers in a positive or negative direction, with 48 and 49 responding to the two button presses.

I assume what is happening is an adjustment to any axes starts sending positive or negative increments continuously to its respective channel, but even the slightest adjustment to any axes sets nearly all of them in motion, so I can't discern which is which. Even if I did identify which is which, continual endless counting is of no use to me, I need hard limits with a central idle value like +/-512.

Looking over the xml configurations would lead me to believe this is exactly what the device should be doing most of the time, as in most of it's app configurations it has just that, +/-512, but that is never what I get over the raw HID stream. It doesn't matter what application profile is active and successfully operating within the 3Dconnection properties, I get the same 6 continuous values all of the time.

Since i'm new to using Windows for these purposes I suspected the HID object in my IDE might be causing the issue. However, when plugging in my many other HID devices (game controllers, dj controllers, etc) they all respond as one would expect; each control giving a single channel change from one hard limit value to another. Its just this one Space Navigator driver that is acting so strange.

This is a rather important project with a quickly approaching deadline, and I have no choice but to implement it on Windows. Any help or suggestions would be Greatly appreciated.

cheers,
-P
jwick
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Re: generic usb hid driver in windows 8?

Post by jwick »

Each device tells the system how to interpret the data from it. Some devices tell the system to count continuously up/down, other devices tell the system to forward on the exact values. it seems the software you are relying on is treating the SpaceNavigator in the former way.

The device does produce values in the +/-512 range on each axis (as you found on OSX). It does not count up/down continuously. Take a look at the software that is reading the devices -- this channel 0, 4, ,8, ... business is not USB, that's your software. See if there is a way of telling it that a particular device should be treated as a "relative" or "absolute" device.
racso
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Dec 22, 2016 12:55 pm

Re: generic usb hid driver in windows 8?

Post by racso »

hi Photon, im exactly in the same situation, did you find a solution?
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