by Mike Maynard
So here is my situation. I had the brilliant idea to set up virtual machines for my boys to use, and let them access them via an HP Thin Client, and Windows Remote Desktop. Great idea right? I thought so….. right up to the point where I wanted to introduce them to the Arduino…..
The Thin clients are running Windows Embedded Standard (WES) an embedded version of XP. They then connect to their Win 8.1 pro virtual machines using remote desktop. Its actually set up so when they log into the the thin client (TC) the remote desktop session (RDP) auto launches and connects them to their virtual machine.
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The directions that follow make the following assumptions:
- You already know how to setup and use an Arduino on a standard computer
- You are somewhat familiar with driver installations
- You understand the basics of making a Remote Desktop Connection and how to set its options prior to the connection.
The first problem is, WES does not have driver support for the Arduino. After much digging I stumbled upon this article – http://www.maxvalente.com/2013/03/installing-arduino-on-windows-embedded/ – which was instrumental in making this work.
I only needed 2 files from his list
I originally tried copies out of a Windows 7 install, but I am not sure they will work. Not having a handy XP install, I turned to google. I found the needed files, and downloaded them along with the standard Arduino fileset from www.arduino.cc (download the zip and not the exe, since we only need the drivers at this point). Extract the Arduino zip someplace handy, and add the 2 above files to the drivers directory.
Plug in your arduino and let the driver install process start. Choose the driver folder location inside the arduino directory, and voila – you should have a functional Arduino COM port! (note: on both of my installs, I had placed a copy of usbser.sys into c:windowssystem32drivers first. I am not sure if this is necessary or not. Also on one TC, it asked me to locate that file on my windows xp install disk, I just pointed it to the one in the above mentioned drivers directory and it worked fine)
Now on to the second problem!
Now that we have a working COM port for the Arduino on the TC – we need to pass it through to the RDP session. I have several hours of banging my head against the wall here, and its really a simple solution, courtesy of this post here:
http://www.thinstuff.com/faq/index.php?action=artikel&id=27Long and short, upon making your RDP connection, click the options dropdown. then choose the Local Resources tab, followed by the ‘more’ button. Then check the Ports checkbox, and click OK. Then you can make your connection like normal (or save the connection for simple use later)
Once you connect to your remote session, your Arduino Com port should be passed through to the remote session, using the same Com port #.
Voila!! – you now have an arduino plugged into a Windows Thin Client, and passed through to the Remote Desktop Session of another machine.