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

[Jfclouti]

Hello,

I'm new to the CNC world. I've got a brand new CNC machine, 3 axis. Months ago, before I even new UCCNC existed, I bought a XHC-WHB04b-4 pendant on Aliexpress.

I would love to be able to use it with UCCNC. unfortunately I have no idea how to code and create a plugin.

Did anyone create one? I could be willing to pay someone to create one...

Thanks.

JF.

[cncdrive]

I see very little chance for this to be written by anybody and my opinion is based on how hard was for us to write the XHC-HB04 pendant plugin.
We got the SDK library for that pendant, but it worked so unreliably and buggy that we finally had to sniff out the communication protocol and write our own HID library for the device.
I can tell you that doing this took about 200 hours of work for my advanced programmer collegue.
I don't know much about the WHC04b-4 pendant, but if it has a similarly bad SDK library then I think that if someone will want to write a plugin for money would charge a lot, because as said it is about a full month of fulltime work which I would say to cost between 2000-4000 Euros depending on the programmer.

[Robertspark]

Have you tried the standard uccnc XHC-HB04 plugin?

presume it does not work.

would it be possible for you to plugin the XHC-WHB04-4 pendant and obtain the USB HID VID & PID for the device?
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/125 ... id-and-pid

It may be possible for CNCdrive who developed the STD XHB-HB04 plugin to simply change the VID & PID and it "may" work for you.... or at least some of it.... they can podvide a demo DLL for you to load into the plugins folder for you to try out.

[Robertspark]

I did a bit of work on the ShuttleXpress.

Basically I got "most" of it to work, and with a little more time probably the other bits and the shuttle pro.

I did provide the sourcecode too which could be modified to take input from any USB HID {human Interface Device}
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=23&p=25&hilit=shuttlexpress#p25

basically, first thing you must know is the PID & VID, without these two numbers you will never get anywhere.

Once getting those, what you need is an app which will act as a scanner for button presses.

Then you sit there and press all of the buttons one at a time and the jog wheel

What you are looking for is to find out what button triggers what code.

Then you relate that code to the button press you want within the plugin.

Starting from scratch is difficult (with C#) ... but not impossible.

The scanner that I used was this basically.
https://www.codeproject.com/Tips/530836 ... -Interface
What I did was changed the PID and VID to match the ShuttleXpress and then button pressed to find the right codes for each button press.

Where in the world are you?

[cncdrive]

Rob,

It's not that simple unfortunately.
The VID/PID is only the vendor ID and product ID.
You have to know them to make the connection, but you have to know several other things.
You have to know what type of HID device or devices interface(s) is it implementing.
E.g. the HB04 implements 2 HID connections, one is for read and one to write data. (I don't remember the types now.)
You also have to sniff out the communication and figure out what the datas mean for the device.
As I wrote previously this is not an easy thing to do, it requires high programming and informatic engineering knowledge.

[Robertspark]

Hmm... probably cheaper to sell it, recover some of the cost on someone else that you've passed it to and buy a XHC-WB04 that works with the available plugin....

you can probably near enough break even on the cost...

https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?ca ... t=HB04+MPG
https://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale- ... eedQuery=n

[Jfclouti]

Thanks everyone. I will consider my options knowing all these infos now.

JF

[Steamer]

I see very little chance for this to be written by anybody and my opinion is based on how hard was for us to write the XHC-HB04 pendant plugin.
We got the SDK library for that pendant, but it worked so unreliably and buggy that we finally had to sniff out the communication protocol and write our own HID library for the device.
I can tell you that doing this took about 200 hours of work for my advanced programmer collegue.
I don't know much about the WHC04b-4 pendant, but if it has a similarly bad SDK library then I think that if someone will want to write a plugin for money would charge a lot, because as said it is about a full month of fulltime work which I would say to cost between 2000-4000 Euros depending on the programmer.

Hello cncdrive,

The support for the XHC-WB04 on UCNC was a big plus for me. That and the UCNC 2017 screenset from Gerry made me purchase UCNC.

btw on UCNC the pendant movements are more responsive that I ever had it on Mach3.

fyi
Emile

[cncdrive]

Hi,

OK, I understand your point of view about the pendants, but it is too much work for us at the moment which work will basicly never pay off.
The other reason what I did not mentioned and why I think it should be no priority for us to develop a plugin for more chinese pendants,
is because there are alternatives from reputable companies, like: http://www.vistacnc.com/
And we also have a wireless pendant: http://shop.cncdrive.com/index.php?productID=358
And will have a more advanced one soon. (Under development)

The main issue I see with chinese pendants and many other chinese electronics in general is that they don't care about keeping back and/or forward compatibility.
So, what I think is that even if we develop a plugin for this pendant then it will be still only a question of time when they will release a new incompatible version of the same pendant and abandoning the manufacturing and the support (if there ever was any support) for this current version.
There are already several different sub-versions of these kind of pendants and they are not even compatible by interface, so we could easily go into an endless loop if we want to support these type of pendants.
And these companies do not take the time to develop a UCCNC plugin or to even ask us to make one, so why would we support their products?

[wright]

Is there any more news on this item? I have one of these wireless pendants which I have used on Mach 3 on an old cnc installation for the last 2 years. It works well and I would be sorry to have to switch to a USB cable version. I wondered if the Mach 3 plugin is any help in developing a UCCNC version?

John