Ruby-usb

Ruby
1

hey all. anyone able to build the ruby-usb libusb bindings? i’ve
tried on os x, fedora 8, debian sarge, etch, and ubuntu 6.06… no
luck. it doesn’t look like the library is actively maintained, but
it’s a useful one and some great work has been done so far. it’d be
nice to have it working well.

thanks,
tom metge

2

common courtesy would demand a url at the least:

http://www.a-k-r.org/ruby-usb/

:slight_smile:

3

I have not been able to, but I know at least two people have been able
to on OS X; the guy who wrote ruby-nxt and one other guy who demoed it
at fOSCON in Portland.

On 1/10/08, Tom M. [email protected] wrote:

luck. it doesn’t look like the library is actively maintained, but
it’s a useful one and some great work has been done so far. it’d be
nice to have it working well.

thanks,
tom metge

–
Giles B.

Podcast: http://hollywoodgrit.blogspot.com
Blog: http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com
Portfolio: http://www.gilesgoatboy.org
Tumblelog: http://giles.tumblr.com

4

On Sat, Jan 12, 2008, Giles B. wrote:

I have not been able to, but I know at least two people have been able
to on OS X; the guy who wrote ruby-nxt and one other guy who demoed it
at fOSCON in Portland.

I don’t remember a libusb demo at foscon. Are you thinking of the RAD
demo with the arduino and the spinny flag thing? Of course, I might
have missed it.

Ben

5

I have not been able to, but I know at least two people have been able
to on OS X; the guy who wrote ruby-nxt and one other guy who demoed it
at fOSCON in Portland.

I don’t remember a libusb demo at foscon. Are you thinking of the RAD
demo with the arduino and the spinny flag thing? Of course, I might
have missed it.

Now I’m confused. There was a RAD demo? The spinny flag sounds vaguely
familiar. I thought I would remember a RAD demo, though. There’s a
project I’ve been wanting to do for years which RAD might be perfect
for.

Anyway. I’m referring to the Mindstorms demo, but I got it confused.
The Mindstorms demo used ruby-nxt, and ruby-nxt requires Linux
Bluetooth libraries, not Ruby USB ones.

–
Giles B.

Podcast: http://hollywoodgrit.blogspot.com
Blog: http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com
Portfolio: http://www.gilesgoatboy.org
Tumblelog: http://giles.tumblr.com

6

You might look for Michael Hewner, see his talk on ruby-usb here:

http://mtnwestrubyconf2007.confreaks.com/session09.html

7

On Sat, Jan 12, 2008, Giles B. wrote:

Now I’m confused. There was a RAD demo? The spinny flag sounds vaguely
familiar. I thought I would remember a RAD demo, though. There’s a
project I’ve been wanting to do for years which RAD might be perfect
for.

Me too. I don’t remember any NXT demo at foscon. There was definitely
a RAD demo.

Ben

8

Now I’m confused. There was a RAD demo? The spinny flag sounds vaguely
familiar. I thought I would remember a RAD demo, though. There’s a
project I’ve been wanting to do for years which RAD might be perfect
for.

Me too. I don’t remember any NXT demo at foscon. There was definitely
a RAD demo.

He went right after my music demo. Simple Mindstorms robot
remote-controlled from a laptop. He had people looking at the stage
because the projector didn’t have an image of the robot. He just had
it turn left or something to demonstrate that was remote-controlling
it via Ruby.

–
Giles B.

Podcast: http://hollywoodgrit.blogspot.com
Blog: http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com
Portfolio: http://www.gilesgoatboy.org
Tumblelog: http://giles.tumblr.com

9

thanks pat et. all. great reference here.

tom

10

On Sat, Jan 12, 2008, Giles B. wrote:

Me too. I don’t remember any NXT demo at foscon. There was definitely
a RAD demo.

He went right after my music demo. Simple Mindstorms robot
remote-controlled from a laptop. He had people looking at the stage
because the projector didn’t have an image of the robot. He just had
it turn left or something to demonstrate that was remote-controlling
it via Ruby.

Damn, I’m sorry I missed that. Sounds awesome.

Ben

11

Yesterday I succeeded in compiling ruby-usb under Leopard (OS X).
That’s what I did.

  1. downloaded the latest cvs snapshot from
    ruby-usb - libusb binding for Ruby (the zipped version doesn’t work!)
  2. installed the libusb library under /usr/local/bin
  3. changed the extconf.rb as follows:

require ‘mkmf’
find_header(“usb.h”, “/usr/local/include”)
find_library(“usb”, nil, “/usr/local/lib”)
have_library(“usb”, “usb_init”)
create_makefile(‘usb’)

  1. typed the plain usual make; make install

Now I have a usb.bundle that works. For what it matters, now I’m not
pretty sure about how to use it…
Cheers,
Paolo

12

Hi,

You’re certainly right - the zipped version won’t compile on my (Ubuntu
7.10)
Linux system either. But, the latest SVN snapshot does compile without
problem.

Cheers,
Arlen.