Bi-directional Raw HID?

[timonsku]

I was wondering if bi-directional HID is already working and if you tested or have an example for raw HID?
It's a feature I'm desperately missing and the current state of the Arduino USB stack is really not helpful in implementing it, so I was hoping tinyusb might be finally the fix for the sad state of USB on Arduino :)

[hathach]

@PTS93 currently not yet. Output report can be done via control endpoint (e.g keyboard LED) since it is rarely used. Adding output endpoint for HID is easy enough, I just need a reason/scenario to do that.

For Arduino library, I am currently working on it here https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_TinyUSB_Arduino still require a bit more works, it is currently tested with nrf52 core first and port it to samd later one.

[timonsku]

I did make a case for this a while back for both CircuitPython and Arduino, if you wanna have a look at my reasoning:
adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_HID#25 (comment)
arduino/ArduinoCore-samd#339
The Arduino issue mostly just references the comment I made for CircuitPython.

Given that tinyusb is already being used for CircuitPython and that it will now also be available for Arduino would make this the perfect target to integrate this feature and make it available for both platforms.
It would also ensure a somewhat identical behaviour on both platforms which would be great.

Let me know if I can help with it in any way. I have nrf52 boards as well as M0 and M4 boards from Adafruit to test or develop on.

[hathach]

thanks @PTS93 , now we have a reason to add it. I will try to make a simple example with it, possibly an simple echo script via HID In & Out endpoint using libusb

[timonsku]

Awesome! That would be tremendous!

[hathach]

@PTS93 PR #61 should implement this. The hid echo example is https://github.com/hathach/tinyusb/tree/master/examples/device/hid_generic_inout

there is also a simple hid_test.py to send and receive from HID device. It is only tested on my ubuntu (macos, windows please check out the py hid installation). Let's me know if that meets your expectation. Feel free to discuss/feedback on how it can be enhanced.

[timonsku]

Awesome! Thank you for getting on this so quickly.
I was able to test it on Ubuntu with an nRF52840 Feather Express and the Arduino example.
I also tested it with node.js on the host side which was also working great!

I also tried it on windows but could not get a communication going. Not sure where the issue is. Only tried it with my node.js test script as the python library seems to be *nix only or atleast does not provide instruction for windows.

[timonsku]

In terms of how it can be enhanced. I think some more user friendly examples would probably be great (e.g. how to send a simple string from arduino to pc), this is something I should be able to help with, I may have some time next week to work on some more example code for both Arduino and PC.

Other than that I will start incorporating this into an existing piece of software that is currently using Serial to communicate. I will let you know how that goes. It would be a pretty good test as this software is sending back and forth a lot of data and relies on being low latency.

[hathach]

Yeah, the example is not really great, just a proof of concept for now. Too bad, it doesn't run on windows, but windows user can find other tool with HID write to test with. But I agree we need something simple enough but yet running on windows,macos and linux. I will give it another try later on, got to write bunch of codes just now.

FYI: just added this to Arduino lib as well https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_TinyUSB_Arduino/tree/master/examples/hid_generic_inout

[timonsku]

I am working with @todbot to get a node.js example on windows going. His library is cross-platform so that is technically a good target for a cross-platform example.
I let you know how it goes.

[hathach]

thanks, that will be very useful. It feel a bit strange that a web script can do better cross-platform than python :D, hopefully it doesn't need much effort for installation :)