accessing hardware and interacting with other programs

[magillig]

I am wanting to know how to read in the outputs from an external device(from a usb port or serial port etc.). I would also like to know how to interact with a program, such as itunes or windows media player. Finally, does anyone know of a good tutorial on wireless devices?

I have had experience programming in C,C++, and Java, so I would like suggestions with these languages.

I know the question of what am I planning on doing will come up, so I'll just answer it here. I am wanting to make basically a remote device that will let me adjust the volume, change the song, delete a song, etc. in itunes, WMP, etc. I would also like to eventually make it wireless.

I also know this is going to take some learning on my part, but I'm going to school for CPE/EE, so I figure I'll eventually learn this stuff.

Thanks in advance for any and all help.

 

[SamurAchzar]

Hey,

The way of interacting with a serial port in Windows is really simple - It's almost like regular file I/O.

Here's a nice PDF I've found: Tutorial

There is a certain class of USB devices called "CDC" which just emulate a serial port device and appear as such under Windows. The little USB->Serial adapters fall into this class.
You can use one of these to turn any serial device to USB - and then just handle it like a normal COM port under Windows.

Good luck!

 

[Armitage]

Yep, there are libraries out there that make serial port access basically like file I/O Here's another link: http://www.easysw.com/~mike/serial/serial.html

But for your stated purpose, I'd look into IR controllers - look into some of open source home theatre PC projects. You should find stuff you can use directly or at least learn from.