Unmanaged Visual C++ driver for Wasatch Photonics spectrometers which does not utilize .NET or COM.
All drivers must make a decision as to what is within their remit and where to "draw the line" on functionality. If you implement too many features under the hood, you risk "bloatware"; if you don't provide enough automation, you scare off would-be spectroscopic innovators who aren't saavy with bitwise manipulation.
This driver exists within a software catalog which already includes a fully-featured driver suite (Wasatch.NET) supporting high-level languages like C#, Visual Basic, MATLAB and LabVIEW, as well as an eclectic but functional Python package (Wasatch.PY) capable of supporting GUI applications like ENLIGHTEN.
Therefore, as open-source reference implementations have already been provided for every feature available through our USB API (see Wasatch Photonics ENG-0001), it is the intent to make the C/C++ driver as small and lightweight as possible. Although every spectrometer feature will be available, not every spectroscopic technique will be automated.
This boundary remains malleable and may be adjusted per customer request and arising use-cases.
It is also noteworthy that the driver is maintained as an open-source project on GitHub, so if users wish to add new features themselves, they are encouraged to fork and submit pull requests :-)
- see Backlog for a list of the features intended, rejected, and undecided for inclusion.
- Visual Studio (tested with 2019 Community Edition)
This library is built atop the same libusb-win32 back-end used by ENLIGHTEN, Wasatch.NET etc. Therefore, if you have one of those installed, it should "just work". Until an installer is added to this project, it is recommended that users install ENLIGHTEN first as the quickest way to install and configure the .inf files to associate our USB VID and PID with the libusb-win32 low-level driver.
- see Linux
- see MacOS
(both declared by WasatchVCPP.h)
All namespaces are prefixed with WasatchVCPP, meaning "Wasatch Photonics Visual C++".
This is the overall architecture as I envision it (including peer libraries Wasatch.NET and Wasatch.PY for comparison).
_WasatchVCPP.cs__________
| |
WasatchVCPPNet <--> Driver, Spectrometer | ___________ ____________ _____________
(C# example) |_________________________| | ENLIGHTEN |<-->| Wasatch.PY |<-->| pyusb |
^ |___________| |____________| |_____________|
| ^
_WasatchVCPP.h______|____ _WasatchVCPP.dll/lib______________________ |
| C API v | | | |
CustomerApp.c <---> wp_set_laser_enable() <----> WasatchVCPPWrapper.cpp (C API impl) | ______v_______ ______________
| ^ | | `--> WasatchVCPP::Driver | | libusb-win32 | | spectrometer |
| _C++ API__________|_ | | `--> WasatchVCPP::Spectrometer <---------->| (libusb.h) |<-->| (ENG-0001) |
| | Proxy::Driver, | | | | `--> WasatchVCPP::EEPROM (etc) | |______________| |______________|
WasatchVCPPDemo <----> Spectrometer <-' | | | `--> WasatchVCPP::FeatureMask | ^ \ /
(C++ example) | |____________________| | | (actual library implementation) | | `-.inf-'
|_________________________| |__________________________________________| | (VID, PID)
(customer ABI) (DLL ABI) _____________ ______v_______
C#, Delphi <-->| Wasatch.NET |<-->| LibUsbDotNet |
LabVIEW etc |_____________| |______________|
Some may wonder, if WasatchVCPPNet can call into WasatchVCPP, then could not Wasatch.NET do the same, making Wasatch.NET much smaller, and consolidating all business logic, opcodes, marshalling, endian fiddling etc into a single library?
And since Python can obviously call into C libraries, could not Wasatch.PY not do the same, such that we only have one actual (C/C++) "application driver," wrapped by multiple lightweight language bindings?
Yes, we could do that. And it's not out of bounds that we may someday do that. But that's not currently in scope or required, and it's not what we're doing right now.
(Also, it can be useful to have "native" driver logic in C#, for instance to access USB spectrometers from Xamarin on Android...a C library would actually be less convenient for mobile platforms. So there is that.)
The WasatchVCPP distribution is structured as follows. (Files ending in * are populated at build.)
-
include/
- WasatchVCPP.h (provides both C and C++ APIs)
-
lib/
- x86/
- WasatchVCPP.dll*
- WasatchVCPP.lib*
- libusb0.dll*
- x64/
- WasatchVCPP.dll*
- WasatchVCPP.lib*
- libusb0.dll*
- x86/
-
bin/
- WasatchVCPPDemo.exe*
- libusb0.dll*
-
dist/ (pre-compiled versions of libusb from the libusb-win32 distribution)
- x86/
- x64/
-
libusb_drivers/
- The .inf and .cat files used to associate Wasatch Photonics USB spectrometers with the libusb-win32 low-level driver. This folder is an exact copy of that provided through Wasatch.NET:
- https://github.com/WasatchPhotonics/Wasatch.NET/tree/master/libusb_drivers
- To "install" these drivers with your spectrometer, follow the same procedure defined for Wasatch.NET:
- https://github.com/WasatchPhotonics/Wasatch.NET#post-install-step-1-libusb-drivers
-
WasatchVCPPLib/
- WasatchVCPPLib/
- sources to build WasatchVCPP.dll from Visual Studio
- WasatchVCPPDemo/
- Visual C++ GUI demo using WasatchVCPP.dll (no COM, .NET or managed memory)
- Setup32/
- Setup64/
- WasatchVCPPLib/
-
WasatchVCPPNet/
- C# demo using WasatchVCPP.dll from managed .NET WinForms GUI
-
WasatchCPPLib/ (future)
- Makefile tree to build WasatchCPP.so or WasatchCPP.dylib for POSIX environments using gcc / clang toolchain
There are basically five ways you can use WasatchVCPP:
- use the raw C functions (C API) to call precompiled WasatchVCPP.dll via C or C++
- use WasatchVCPP::Proxy (C++ API) to call precompiled WasatchVCPP.dll via C++
- compile WasatchVCPP.dll yourself, then call WasatchVCPP::Driver and WasatchVCPP::Spectrometer directly (having ensured perfect ABI alignment)
- import WasatchVCPP files into your own project, then call them directly
- make a copy of WasatchVCPPNet/WasatchVCPP.cs and call it from your C# program
The key takeaway for robust C++ DLL design is that DLLs should only export a "flattened" C API, and not use C++ types, classes, templates, STL etc:
That requirement drove the creation of WasatchVCPP.h, which provides a fully flattened, C-compatible interface. However, it's not much fun calling C libraries from C++, which led to the creation of WasatchVCPP::Proxy (also defined in WasatchVCCP.h).
If you are calling the pre-compiled DLL and .lib provided in our distribution, you can use either API defined in WasatchVCPP.h to access the DLL functions.
Alternately, since the driver itself is open-source, you may choose to simply compile the DLL yourself, such that it will be fully "ABI-compatible" with your application code, so that you can instantiate and call the WasatchVCPP::Driver and WasatchVCPP::Spectrometer classes directly. As long as the entire source of your project and dependent libraries are compiled with the same Visual Studio version etc, this should work fine.
As a second alternetive, you can always skip the DLL entirely and simply import the WasatchVCPP sources directly into your project, similarly allowing you to call WasatchVCPP::Driver and WasatchVCPP::Spectrometer classes directly. This should likewise work fine, noting that it may complicate updates to newer releases of WasatchVCPP.
A simple Visual C++ GUI project, "WasatchVCPPDemo" is included in the solution so you can see how these functions can be called through the WasatchVCPP::Proxy C++ interface (whose source code itself provides an example to using the underlying C interface).
In short, this is a typical calling sequence:
#include "WasatchCPP.h"
// instantiate a Driver object
WasatchVCPP::Proxy::Driver driver;
// set where you want the logfile written (if any)
driver.setLogfile(LOGFILE_PATH);
// open all connected spectrometers
int count = driver.openAllSpectrometers();
// take a handle to the first spectrometer found on the bus
WasatchVCPP::Proxy::Spectrometer* spectrometer = driver.getSpectrometer(0);
// set integration time
spectrometer->setIntegrationTimeMS(ms);
// turn the laser on
spectrometer->setLaserEnable(true);
// take a spectrum
vector<double> spectrum = spectrometer->getSpectrum();
// turn the laser off
spectrometer->setLaserEnable(false);
// cleanup
driver.closeAllSpectrometers();
You can see the above lines "in situ" when you grep the demo for "example":
$ grep "example" WasatchVCPPLib/WasatchVCPPDemo/WasatchVCPPDemo.cpp
A second GUI demo is provided in the WasatchVCPPNet solution. This is packaged as a separate solution (as opposed to merely a project in the WasatchVCPPLib solution) to clearly demonstrate that only the WasatchVCPP.dll is being called, and there are no "intra-package" linkage references or other shortcuts.
This GUI was written in C# for the simple reason that spectral graphing is trivial in .NET, and it was easier to call the WasatchVCPP C API from C# than to import a graphing framework into Visual C++ :-(
- see Memory Profiling
- see Changelog
libusb-win32
- https://sourceforge.net/p/libusb-win32/wiki/Home/
- https://sourceforge.net/p/libusb-win32/wiki/Examples/
- https://sourceforge.net/p/libusb-win32/wiki/Documentation/
