Support usbdmx.com interface

[peternewman]

https://www.usbdmx.com/usb_dmx_interface.html

Protocol docs:
https://www.usbdmx.com/protocol.html

Appears to have no bulk update option, so might be rather slow or want some cleverness to only send changed channels. Unit is FTDI based, but with it's own micro, so would need either it's own plugin, or a disabled by default option in the usbdmx plugin so it doesn't normally grab them from the FTDI plugin (see #1556 for an example).

@clxjaguar already has some code in C for it (maybe they'd be interested in trying it):
https://github.com/clxjaguar/usbdmxcurses/blob/master/usbdmx.c

[clxjaguar]

Oh yes, I would be personally REALLY interested by the feature, and of course, can test it. That device is seen by the OS as a virtual serial port, and need only to be updated with channel(s) with changed value(s).

[peternewman]

Are you interested in having a go at coding it too (given you've already got code, just outside of OLA)? Happy to help out with advice, but I'm rather reluctant to write it due to https://www.openlighting.org/ola/get-help/ola-faq/#Can_you_add_support_for_the_ltinsert-name-heregt_device and similar abandoned code like #400.

The first thing would be a combination of #1556 (for the default FTDI off stuff) and there's even a nice developer guide for adding a new device to this existing plugin:
https://github.com/OpenLightingProject/ola/blob/master/plugins/usbdmx/README.developer.md#adding-support-for-a-new-usb-device

[clxjaguar]

I'm sadly not a pro programmer. I wanted to do it since years, but OLA architecture is really hard for me to understand (even with the guide) and I would need some help to achieve this.

[peternewman]

Fair enough @clxjaguar , I'm happy to help with advice if I can, or I could probably do the discovery bit of it, so you'd just need to deal with the generating and sending DMX part?

It does DMX input too doesn't it?

[peternewman]

Are you interested @clxjaguar ? Essentially you'd just need to take a DMXBuffer ( http://docs.openlighting.org/ola/doc/latest/classola_1_1_dmx_buffer.html ) and generate the data to send down the serial port from it, and I should be able to do the rest.

[clxjaguar]

Of course I'm interested.
(And btw, just back from holidays so I got back access to a my computer, sorry for the response delay!)

[peternewman]

Of course I'm interested.

Great, take a look at:
https://github.com/peternewman/ola/tree/usbdmxcom

Probably worth pulling that into your own branch, then you just need to write CreateFrame within plugins/usbdmx/USBDMXCom.cpp

(And btw, just back from holidays so I got back access to a my computer, sorry for the response delay!)

No worries, hope you had a nice break!

[clxjaguar]

Great, take a look at:
https://github.com/peternewman/ola/tree/usbdmxcom

OK, I did git-clone it. But I'm afraid I already ran into my first problem, as ./configure says:

checking for cppunit-config... no
checking for Cppunit - version >= 1.9.6... no
configure: error: Missing cppunit, please install >= 1.9.6

(and it stops there)

I don't have this problem with the current (https://github.com/OpenLightingProject/ola.git) git repository's content:

$ ./configure
...
checking for CPPUNIT... yes
...
OLA Version 0.10.8
...

$ apt-cache show *cppunit* | depile "Package:" "Version:" "Status:"
libcppunit-1.14-0	1.14.0-3
libcppunit-dev	1.14.0-3
libcppunit-doc	1.14.0-3
libcppunit-subunit-dev	1.3.0-1
libcppunit-subunit0	1.3.0-1
libcppunit-1.13-0v5	1.13.2-2.1	deinstall

Probably worth pulling that into your own branch, [...]

Can you give me the git commands to make this properly?

[...] then you just need to write CreateFrame within plugins/usbdmx/USBDMXCom.cpp

Thanks a lot.

[peternewman]

OK, I did git-clone it. But I'm afraid I already ran into my first problem, as ./configure says:

I don't have this problem with the current (https://github.com/OpenLightingProject/ola.git) git repository's content:

Strange, can you share the config.log from both builds. I assume you've run autoreconf -i on the broken one? If you do a fresh checkout of the current ola git repo, does it still build cleanly for you?

$ apt-cache show *cppunit* | depile "Package:" "Version:" "Status:"

Can you share a dpkg -l | grep -i cppunit as I'm far more familiar with that output. I've never heard of, and can't find online, depile.

Probably worth pulling that into your own branch, [...]

Can you give me the git commands to make this properly?

This guide is probably pretty good:
https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/getting-started-with-git/managing-remote-repositories

Alternatively in the GitHub website if you just go to edit one of the files in my branch I linked to (e.g. add your name to AUTHORS ), you should end up with a fork of your own of my branch:
https://github.com/peternewman/ola/edit/usbdmxcom/AUTHORS

Then you can clone that branch as normal.

[...] then you just need to write CreateFrame within plugins/usbdmx/USBDMXCom.cpp

Thanks a lot.

I think in your case the length of the command string varies, so you might need to slightly tweak what that command generates, but essentially you may as well return the data once and use it in both async and sync modes.