Duane Newman

I’m working on a small project developed using MaxStream’s XBee-Pro USB module.  To save development time and costs we are using the eval board to send commands from the computer.  The drivers on MaxStream’s website are pretty old and are only 32-bit, no help for Vista 64-bit.

MaxStream is using an FTDI USB to serial port adapter on this board, but have changed the vendor information slightly for their application.  I was able to find FTDI’s usb drivers for 64-bit Vista (and 64-bit XP), but because of the changes to the USB device string it wouldn’t install the drivers. 

After a little digging I was able to add the needed modifications to the driver information files.  After making the modifications windows recognized the drivers from FTDI as also being for MaxStream’s hardware (however, I had to try to install the drivers twice in a row for it to take-not sure why, but it worked on the second try and I didn’t care after that).

Here are the modifications I made (add the lines to the specified sections in each file):

ftdibus.inf

[FtdiHw]

%USB\VID_0403&PID_EE18.DeviceDesc%=FtdiBus.NT,USB\VID_0403&PID_EE18
%USB\VID_0403&PID_EE19.DeviceDesc%=FtdiBus.NT,USB\VID_0403&PID_EE19

[FtdiHw.NTamd64]

%USB\VID_0403&PID_EE18.DeviceDesc%=FtdiBus.NTamd64,USB\VID_0403&PID_EE18
%USB\VID_0403&PID_EE19.DeviceDesc%=FtdiBus.NTamd64,USB\VID_0403&PID_EE19

[Strings]

USB\VID_0403&PID_EE18.DeviceDesc=”Digi PKG-U USB Wireless Module”
USB\VID_0403&PID_EE19.DeviceDesc=”MaxStream XBee XTender Port”

ftdiport.inf

[FtdiHw]

%VID_0403&PID_EE18.DeviceDesc%=FtdiPort232.NT,FTDIBUS\COMPORT&VID_0403&PID_EE18
%VID_0403&PID_EE19.DeviceDesc%=FtdiPort232.NT,FTDIBUS\COMPORT&VID_0403&PID_EE19

[FtdiHw.NTamd64]

%VID_0403&PID_EE18.DeviceDesc%=FtdiPort232.NTamd64,FTDIBUS\COMPORT&VID_0403&PID_EE18
%VID_0403&PID_EE19.DeviceDesc%=FtdiPort232.NTamd64,FTDIBUS\COMPORT&VID_0403&PID_EE19

[Strings]

VID_0403&PID_EE18.DeviceDesc=”Digi PKG-U Serial Port Adapter”
VID_0403&PID_EE19.DeviceDesc=”MaxStream XBee XTender”

Wes has a nice blog post about customizing the prop code snippet from VS2005 to use “_PropertyName” for the private field. While I like to use propertyName for my private fields this did get me to thinking and spurred me on to action over something that has annoyed me since I started using VS2008. Read the rest of this entry »

I finally installed GForge on a new CentOS 5 server. It went pretty smooth (there where a couple hiccups) and now I have a project management system in place for all my projects. Read the rest of this entry »

A reminder to myself on how to delete a windows service

If you are using Visual Studio 2008 and blend together you have likely ran into the problem with loading a VS2008 created WPF project into Blend. It throws up an error about an invalid project file and probably complains about the following line:

<Import Project=”$(MSBuildToolsPath)\Microsoft.CSharp.targets” />

Fortunately there is a service pack out for Blend that fixes this problem (and some other odd issues with Blend). You can download it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=A07196D1-971B-4710-99C8-D3D9603CCFCB&displaylang=en

Ok. So this has been around for a while but I just discovered it today.

Alan Becker has produced some very creative and entertaining flash animations. The basic story is that the animator creates an animation “victim” that then proceeds to fight back. There are two animations in this series, the second one appropriately entitled Animator vs. Animation II.

Also, a fan of the animations has created a flash game where you can play as the animator or animation. Lots of fun.

Go check them out:

Animator vs. Animation

Animator vs. Animation II

Animator vs. Animation Game (there is an ad and an intro to wait through before you can play)

My review of day two at the Heartland Developers Conference.
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My review of my first day at the 2007 Heartland Developers Conference in Omaha, NE.
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I picked up a DSM-G600 a few weeks ago and have been playing around with it.  Although there are better choices available now, as I discovered after I bought it, It is not a bad little unit for a home NAS.  It is linux powered, has room for one internal IDE drive (supported the Seagate 500GB 16MB cache drive i bought for it) and has 2 USB, Gigabit ethernet, and 802.11b networking; all in a small self contained unit.
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http://www.doolwind.com/index.php?page=11

Your programmer personality type is: DHSB
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