Welcome to the usb-bridge.

The usb-bridge is a tool desined to enable communication between the particles and your PC via usb.

To run the usb-bridge:

1) Download and Install the usbbridge.msi Windows Installer package
   (http://particle.teco.edu/software/bridge/index.html#usbbridge)

2) Download and unzip the driver disk for the USB bridge provided by TecO
   (http://particle.teco.edu/software/bridge/index.html#usbbridge)

3) Connect your USBbridge to your computer. Windows will ask you for a driver disk. Select 
   the folder which contains the unzipped driver disk.

3) If you don't have it already, install Java runtime envoirement.
   You can download it from http://java.sun.com/.

4) Open env_run.bat in the USBbridge-directory and edit the first environment-variable. 
   Run env_run.bat 
   If you want to use the USBbridge regularly, it is recomended to add all the 
   informations from env_run.bat to your autoexec.bat or the environment-variable section
   in your System Control Panel (e. g., under Win 2000, click on Start -> Settings -> 
   Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Environment Variables). Otherwise, you have to
   run env_run.bat after each reboot of your system.

5) That's all. You can now start the USBbridge by starting run.bat or open a command-line,
   go to the dist-directory of the USB-bridge and type in "java -jar usbbridgeJava.jar.


To develop and improve the usb-bridge:

If you want to make further developements for the USBbridge, you need some further software.

1) Download and Install the usbbridge.msi Windows Installer package
   (http://particle.teco.edu/software/bridge/index.html#usbbridge)

2) Download and unzip the driver disk for the USB bridge provided by TecO
   (http://particle.teco.edu/software/bridge/index.html#usbbridge)

3) Connect your USBbridge to your computer. Windows will ask you for a driver disk. Select 
   the folder which contains the unzipped driver disk.

4) Install J2SE, avaible at http://java.sun.com/

5) Install swig, avaible at http://www.swig.org/

6) Install ant 1.6.2 (please DO NOT use 1.6.3, it will only return you some errors
   at the moment), avaible at http://ant.apache.org/

7) Download cpptasks from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=36177
   Copy cpptasks.jar to the lib-directory of ant.

8) Open env_build.bat and edit the first three environment-variables.
   Run env_build.bat
   If you want to develope the USBbridge-software regularly, it is recomended to add all the 
   informations from env_build.bat to your autoexec.bat or the environment-variable section
   in your System Control Panel (e. g., under Win 2000, click on Start -> Settings -> 
   Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Environment Variables). Otherwise, you have to run 
   env_run.bat after each reboot of your system.

9) You can now build a new version of the USBbridge by opening a commandline, change the 
   directory to the main-directory of this distribution and type in "ant build.xml". Alternatly, 
   you can build a new version of the dll and/or the command-line tools by using MS Visual Studio.


Note that the usb-bridge consists of two parts, primary the c-core (to be found in myusb.c)
and secondary the java gui (to be found in USBridge.java) wich calls the c implemented methods.
This is done via swig (www.swig.org), wich you will also need to install.That means, that in order 
of your personal changes in the myusb.cpp file to take place, you need to run the build-file first.


Regards,
Thomas Morper <morper@teco.edu>