I am working on a non-audio app for iOS and iPadOS and macOS. This question is specifically about iPadOS for now.
I purchased a generic "USB Volume Control" knob device. I am able to plug it into my (non M1) iPad Pro 12.9 and it does indeed control system volume (rotate), as well as things like rotate through tracks in the Music app (push and rotate), mute (push), etc. I have a second such device from another manufacturer on the way to test with as well.
What I'd really like to do is use it in a non-music context. To be able to capture the raw actions and interpret them in my app's subject domain (DCC model train control).
I have been able, on iPadOS but not iOS [as it doesn't have generic USB support as I understand it] to capture the volume changes by using AVAudioSession and KVO tracking the outputVolume property. I haven't yet figured out how to get the push and push-rotate yet but assume I just need to find the analogue functions in AVAudioSession or some other Apple class.
But I would rather not dink around with the Audio/Music classes and have to "re-purpose" them into my own control needs and was wondering if anyone knew of a way to be able to find and connect to the device and get the values directly.
As iPadOS now has pretty good generic USB support for all sorts of devices, I am hoping there is a way for me to provide service to/with/from those devices but I can't find information through normal internet searches. Poor Google-fu.
I looked at the External Accessory framework but my understanding is that only for MFi certified devices and my attempts to detect the devices have not worked as these are generic USB devices. (Unless there are generic protocols one can register for and make this work).
Thanks for any hints, pointers, admonishments, etc. RTFM is welcome if you tell me the M.
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Is it possible to get icon for network computer/ip address under macOS so iMac has iMac icon etc?
I am using NSNetServiceBrowser to get available services, but I do not know how to get icon like official Finder app does. Finder recognize icons for iMac, MacBookPro etc. Thanks.
I don't have a working solution for you, but I see your question didn't get much attention yet so maybe I can point you in the right direction.
Finder looks for services, and it will check if found services have "device info" associated with them. This is done via Bonjour, looking for a _device-info._tcp pseudo service. A lookup for a device info may return a Bonjour TXT record that indicates the model ID of the gizmo. If Finder succeeds in getting this info, then it assigns an icon accordingly, otherwise, it picks a generic icon.
The icons themselves seem to be stored here: /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle (at least on my 10.13 machine). Check the Info.plist on that bundle, and the other bundles contained within, and you can find mappings between device types and icons.
There are some posts talking about how to customise the icon that's shown for certain devices:
Add custom network device icons in Mac OS X Finder?
Can you use Bonjour for Windows to broadcast a different icon than the Bluescreen?
I tried to follow the steps in this post to examine the model names advertised by some Apple hardware on my network, but couldn't make it work (either using the dig tool or with NSNetService) (although I admit I didn't try very hard with NSNetService as I'm not familiar with it).
This thread discusses potential problems and solutions, however the dig tool wouldn't work for me despite having both SMB and AFP over TCP enabled.
All of these threads are fairly old, although the commentary in the linked SO post suggest this still works at least as of Sierra.
Good luck!
Most of touchpads on laptops don't handle multitouch, hence are not able to send swipe gestures to the OS.
Would it be possible to send some gestures to Windows from an external device, like a Teensy, or a recent Arduino, that can already emulate a keyboard and a mouse. I could send buttons 4 and 5 (mouse wheel up and down), but I would like to send a real swipe gesture (for example with a flex sensor...).
One of the ways that you could work with arduino and similar is to use the Microsoft .NET Microframework, which is an open source code, available for no cost from: Micro Framework
There are other frameworks available for the Artuino that you might want to use. So if you have a great idea on how to utilize the sensor hardware, then the output must meet certain specifications.
To be able to connect to your hardware that reads gestures, you will need to understand how drivers are created, so take a look at this: Info on drivers.
To find that type of information you would need to take a look at above link, this is for sensors, which would appear to be not quite what you are looking for, you are looking to use "gestures" but first you have to be able to make the connection to your device, this guide MIGHT help. I have reviewed it for other reasons.
There is a bunch of stuff to dig through, but first of all, imo, is to understand how to get your software to communicate with Windows 8. Let me know if you have any other questions. I am not the best person, you might want to refer to the community at the Micro Framework link shown above.
Good luck.
That's perfectly possible. What your effectively suggesting is that you want to create your own input peripheral like a trackpad and use that to send inputs. As long as windows recognizes this device as an input source it will work.
I have an usb-camera with its drivers and dll with some functions to use this camera in my solutions. I want to use it in any wide-spread applications, to be able just to choose and use it in Skype, for instance. So. I want to develop something that will allow me to use this device as usual web-camera.
I've heard something about such technologies as "Upper-Level Filter Drivers" and "user-mode DirectShow source filter". Looks like it something that can help.
So the question is: what technologies exist for such tasks? What technology should I choose to solve my problem if I have no skills of driver development?
Skype still uses DirectShow for video capture and user mode filter will do the job. Still Skype makes certain unreasonable assumptions that limit compatible source filters, such as if the developers stopped development/testing as soon as they had their favorite USB cam working and ignoring all other devices users might possibly want to attach.
One of the options you were suggested (in Russian - 1, 2) was to develop a kernel mode driver so that your device is visible to apps through standard WDM Video Capture Filter. This is possible and would work, though in my opinion it is a huge overkill.
Fitting custom source filter is not easy because Skype does not like a debugger attached, however driver development is really a completely different story.
The Skype Forum link you refer to is clearly misleading. The poster complains that Skype update broke compatibility with video sources. And response from admin is about audio devices, and is irrelevant.
I'm trying to write something that will allow a user to use a keyboard/mouse combination on a games console. The approach I've thought of is to do the following:
Figure out how input maps to output in the console's controller. This is good old trial and error, basically connecting the controller via USB to a computer and figuring out how the controller responds to input using detailed USB logging.
Then, write a userland program that takes keyboard/mouse input and converts it to the controller's output.
So far so good. Now comes the complicated bit. I need to figure out a way to connect my computer to the console, while making the console think that what is actually being connected is a standard controller. For this, I will need a way to create a fake USB device, which communicates over a USB port to the console. This is the part that I have no idea whatsoever how to do.
I guess I'm looking for a USB spoofing library of some sort, but I'm not sure where to start looking for something like this. Python bindings for the library would be great, but I'm not fussy. Similarly, something that works on Mac or Linux would be perfect, but I could live with a Windows-only library in a pinch.
USB doesn't work this way. USB involves a directed hierarchy of devices, and trying to connect two host devices (your computer and a console) will only result in bad things happen (like destroying the USB controllers in both devices).
Probably the best thing to do would be to use some sort of embedded processor like an Arduino to sit between your keyboard/mouse and the console to do the conversion.
Simply I am asked to write an application for a smart device (smart cell phone), which will get the GPS coordinates from the device itself.
I have no smart device at all. And I am kind of lost among questions like how can I check if the device have a gps by using the code, if it has how can I obtain them in a "standard" way, do I need to be using frameworks like GeoFrameWork?
So, may somebody list the must or most required things I need to have ready?
Geoframeworks GPS.NET is free these days and it's pretty comprehensive so there's no point reinventing the wheel. It's also friendly to beginners which helps. I strongly recommend downloading it and playing with some of the sample apps. It's a bit tricky if you don't have a physical device to play around with but it does have GPS emulation classes that you can use.
All you need is a copy of VS2008 Pro with the Smart Device SDK installed.