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I am a very novice embedded developer and I am trying to develop a commercial product using Windows Embedded Compact and a Toradex Apalis T30 COM. Firstly just excuse me here, I am not a professional nor a trained engineer, merely a hobbyist trying to push the boundaries so forgive me if this is supposed to be trivial. I should also state that because of this I have no low level USB experience. I would like to use WEC 2013 but Toradex does not quite have it ready yet so for I guess at least another month I am stuck on WEC 7 if that makes any difference.

My problem is that I cannot seem to figure how one goes implementing USB Client functionality in WEC. As in, I want my device to be able to connect to my PC as a USB client with the PC being the host. Now by default it connects with the Active Sync (now Device Center or something) application and that allows serial communication of sorts if I am not mistaken but I really don't want to make my device dependent on ActiveSync as that will leave a very bad impression on customers as it doesn't look very professional and bears to much of an association with yesteryear's Windows Mobile.

My device is a 3D printer and I am assuming that there is no native USB class for 3D printers. All 3D printers I know of merely use a USB COM port to communicate and I guess that that should be fine for me two. Now what I want to know is how I can make my device appear as a plug and play USB COM port (able to support all the major desktop operating systems)? I know I can use an FTDI chip to do this with a UART port on my device but I am thinking that that is a bit of a waste given the fact that my COM has a built-in USB client port.

One would think that WEC would have built-in support for something like this but I cannot find any documentation regarding how to use it if it does indeed exist. The best I can find is http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee481935.aspx but the page does not really say anything useful.

PS. I cannot really afford to buy a USB vendor-id so I am hoping there is a solution to this that does not require one.

Gerharddc
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  • A 3D printer needs an efficient bare metal motion control firmware or possibly a lean RTOS. Trying to run windows on it is basically starting your project 180 degrees in the wrong direction - start out by understanding why current designs in the market work the way they do before committing to a course if action. – Chris Stratton Jan 25 '15 at 19:27
  • @ChrisStratton I can assure you that I have taken the necessary precaution to get my hardware driven real-time, I am planning to use WEC mainly to create a powerful interface. It is though fairly real-time but I do have separate hardware for the really sensitive stuff. I have built a 3D printer from scratch before and do not need help with that, I merely require assistance with USB. – Gerharddc Jan 26 '15 at 17:17

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For windows embedded, you have to manually write a driver or a set of registry entries with the right Device Class ID, Vendor ID and Product ID. Once that is done, you need to integrate it in Windows Embedded and rebuild the solution.

Bilal Qamar
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