microcontroller running portable apps

[picoBrain]

Hi fellow forum members,

Can anyone help me with a portable app problem?
My requirement is to be able to use a ucontroller with USB capability, that when inserted into any PC will automatically run a portable application that resides completely on the ucontroller. No software at all is allowed to be installed on a PC. Any help/pointers would be most appreciated.

many thanks in advance.

 

[kchriste]

Why would you need a USB ucontroller at all? Simply write a PC program which doesn't install anything on the PC and load it onto a flash drive.

 

[picoBrain]

Hi kchriste,

the reason i require a USB is that i will be travelling with this product and whenever i plug it into a PC i could, say for an example, take temperature/humity measurements without the requirement for installing drivers & software via a flash drive or CD. Does this sound reasonable?

 

[Mr RB]

Just use the USB plug to supply +5v, it's generally good for about 100mA. You don't need "USB" capability at all. It's just a PIC device that is powered from the USB port.

 

[picoBrain]

Thanks for your reply Mr RB.

I apologise for not making myself clear. A PC is required so that the portable application software can load in the RAM of the PC (when the peripheral is inserted into the USB port of the PC). For example let's say the hardware, which uses a microcontroller that has USB capabilities and also has an LCD for viewing photos. This hardware is then plugged into the USB port of a PC. Upon which a menu runs automatically from the microcontroller into the PC RAM that enables the user to simply copy photos via this portable app software into the hardware containg the microcontroller. Some clever Digital Photo Frames(DPF) do this already so i know that it is possible. They would probably use an application specific microcontroller. I actually don't wish to make a DPF but this example serves to explain the ideas that i require to implement.

 

[giftiger_wunsch]

Hi kchriste,

the reason i require a USB is that i will be travelling with this product and whenever i plug it into a PC i could, say for an example, take temperature/humity measurements without the requirement for installing drivers & software via a flash drive or CD. Does this sound reasonable?

You wouldn't need to install something to be able to interface the device using software on the PC, just make a program which doesn't require installation. If it needs to be portable, stick it on a pen drive.

 

[Sig239]

You'll need to be more specific about what you want to do. You wouldn't put the PC program on the micro would you? It seems to be more sensible to put the pc program (ie. portable app) on the USB key and run it from there. You would use the micro with USB capabilities as a seperate entity with its own software to collect data from sensors and pass it to the pc program via its USB connection. You could even use the micro to collect data from the sensors and store it on the USB key before you even hook it up to the computer. Of course this is all rubbish until we know what it is your trying to do. Google around for "portable apps" and "pen drive apps" for some very interesting programs that require no installation.

 

[AtomSoft]

Ok guys have you ever had a sandisk cruzer or majicjack.

Its the same thing. Basically he wants to make PIC carry the program and use the PC to run that program without having to install software.

The answer is yes. If you use the right usb framework you can. You just have to make sure you make a autorun.inf for your program and include all dependencies on the pic also. (for VB6 its the VBRUNTIME Files and any other dll,ocx files)

I think its a windows XP only thing tho. Im not sure if your USB would work on anything else... i think windows xp has many general drivers