Any chance someone would create a XHC-WHB04b-4 plugin?

[cncdrive]

No, the mach3 plugin is not any help and the manufacturer's API file is also a garbage (unreliable), so developing such plugin starts with analysing the USB trafic and understanding it and then to write an own HID control code.
It is basically a work like building an Enigma machine.
We've made it for the HB04, but since we have a better more featureful pendant by now (UCR201) for similar cost as those chinese pendants we support our own device instead of the chinese one.
So, I think a plugin will not be written unless if the manufacturer will write one. Or if some knowledgeable users will write one.

Another reason why we will not write a plugin is because as I said it is lots of work and these kind of manufacturers simply dumping/discontinueing their old products when they develop a new one, so this could become an endless development cycle for us if we always want to support all new chinese pendants.

[wright]

Thanks for the reply, that is a pity as the wireless Pendant has many more features than either of the alternatives.

John

[cncdrive]

No, the UCR201 is also a wireless pendant and has more features than the WHB04B-04.

[Willy]

Oh that's a real shame this doesn't work I have one of these as well I guess I could try and sell it.

[ger21]

Everyone that owns one should be emailing XHC every day.
It's their pendant, they should support it (and their customers).

[beefy]

I always feel a lot safer when the same company manufactures the product AND writes the software for it.

This is exactly what Cncdrive is doing and thus they have total control of everything.

[vedecoid]

I can relate to the position of CNCDrive to not invest their time and money into developing such driver. They are absolutely right in that. However, what I don't understand is that they are not making the source code for the existing plugin available for someone else to start from. UCCNC is a fantastic piece of software in itself, but part of the appeal for me was the ability to write plugins in C# which I'm very familiar with. The mleast that should be available is source code for the existing plugins. For this HD04B-X, the difficult part is not the HID sniffing and figuring out of the protocol used for someone with the right experience and the right tools. HID is a very simple protocol. This info is by the way already available on github and in various forums provided by folks who wrote a working LinuxCNC driver for it. What would be difficult and time consuming for someone like me with the experience of writing HID software in C# is figuring out how to integrate existing HID communication solutions that we wrote before into the UCCNC plugin framework. Hence the question again : can you please open source the existing plugin ? If that isn't possible, I can only conclude that this is rather based on an attempt to make the purchase of the CNCDrive pendant the only viable option for your customers. I'm sure though that that is not the case.

[cncdrive]

Any wired pendants can be made work with the UCCNC. So, that the only viable solution is our pendant is absolutely incorrect.
If we talking about wireless pendants, then yes, we support our own pendant the UCR201, which is much more power efficient (longer battery life), has faster LCD updates, has longer transmit range than any of those chinese pendants and has similar pricing as the chinese wireless pendants.

HID is not UCCNC specific and also the communication with chinese pendants is not UCCNC specific.
Only the UCCNC function calls are UCCNC specific which function prototypes are all available in Visual Studio Intellisense when loading the plugininterface.dll into a project.
The UCR201 plugin also contains firmware codes and update routines which is why we do not share the source code.
The XHC-HB04 chinese pendant plugin was lots of work for us and we do not want to help concurent software developers with sharing the source code, they should take their time just like we did if they want to make that pendant properly work with their softwares.

[eathaddict]

I can relate to the position of CNCDrive to not invest their time and money into developing such driver. They are absolutely right in that. However, what I don't understand is that they are not making the source code for the existing plugin available for someone else to start from. UCCNC is a fantastic piece of software in itself, but part of the appeal for me was the ability to write plugins in C# which I'm very familiar with. The mleast that should be available is source code for the existing plugins. For this HD04B-X, the difficult part is not the HID sniffing and figuring out of the protocol used for someone with the right experience and the right tools. HID is a very simple protocol. This info is by the way already available on github and in various forums provided by folks who wrote a working LinuxCNC driver for it. What would be difficult and time consuming for someone like me with the experience of writing HID software in C# is figuring out how to integrate existing HID communication solutions that we wrote before into the UCCNC plugin framework. Hence the question again : can you please open source the existing plugin ? If that isn't possible, I can only conclude that this is rather based on an attempt to make the purchase of the CNCDrive pendant the only viable option for your customers. I'm sure though that that is not the case.

I had the same frustration, but bought a the WHB04B anyway, i have some IT skills and have made a plugin for the pendant. I have just spend 1 day so far and have all the buttons and Joging working.
I just need to find out how to update the DRO on the pendant, make it look respectable and will make it available.

[beefy]

However, what I don't understand is that they are not making the source code for the existing plugin available for someone else to start from. UCCNC is a fantastic piece of software in itself, but part of the appeal for me was the ability to write plugins in C# which I'm very familiar with. The mleast that should be available is source code for the existing plugins. For this HD04B-X, the difficult part is not the HID sniffing and figuring out of the protocol used for someone with the right experience and the right tools. HID is a very simple protocol. This info is by the way already available on github and in various forums provided by folks who wrote a working LinuxCNC driver for it. What would be difficult and time consuming for someone like me with the experience of writing HID software in C# is figuring out how to integrate existing HID communication solutions that we wrote before into the UCCNC plugin framework. Hence the question again : can you please open source the existing plugin ? If that isn't possible, I can only conclude that this is rather based on an attempt to make the purchase of the CNCDrive pendant the only viable option for your customers. I'm sure though that that is not the case.

Crikey, it's true what some people say - we live in a society where people expect stuff for free.

Cncdrive is a business, not a charity. Business is hard enough without giving away your hard work. If there's one thing I learned in business it's that many customers will take take take at your expense.

Why on earth should they design and develop a hardware pendant, then give away the source code so others can reverse engineer THEIR product, or make 3rd party pendants, and cause lost sales to Cncdrive. If there was some business gain accomplished by doing that then OK but I can't see what it would be. It's completely normal for many businesses to want the sales to themselves. Why on earth would they want to help the competition while they lose.

But in this case it goes further than that. I can see a bunch of 3rd party design pendants producing a lot of support questions for Cncdrive, and that is not really fair. So not only would they lose sales but they also get their time taken up dealing with questions, due to 3rd party equipment which may not interact correctly with UCCNC. What if the 3rd party pendant plugin caused issues that APPEAR unrelated to the pendant. Then customers start blaming Cncdrive for issues that are not of their making. Result, more lost sales.

Personally I like everything done by Cncdrive, then when there is a problem you know it's THEIR problem and they can work on a fix.