Driver installation

For USBDUX-D and USBDUX-fast there's no need to install drivers! Most Linux distributions come with the USBDUX drivers because they are part of the mainstream kernel. For example, from Ubuntu 10.04.2 LTS (Lucid Lynx) the drivers have been stable and running without any problems. See the screenshot above.

For the new USBDUXsigma you need to install its driver and firmware. Just unpack one of these tar balls and follow the instructions:

The driver for the USBDUX-sigma has been submitted to kernel.org and will be probably part of the kernel from version 3.2.0 onwards so that no driver installation won't be necassary very soon.

USB DUX is part of the COMEDI project. There you find the source code of the whole project and also a very active community which will help you with your software development.

Ubuntu Karmic Koala

Ubuntu Karmic comes with all drivers and an up-to-date comedilib package.

You only need to install the firmware files (/lib/firmware):

  1. Download the firmware files.
  2. change to the root directory: cd /
  3. unpack the files: tar xzvf /tmp/usbdux_firmware.tar.gz

That's it.

Comedi source packages

You can get the newest source code from the comedi git respository. This is recommended if you work with very recent kernels and/or the USBDUXsigma board.

Hints, release notes, trouble shooting

if you see the lines:
comedi_: usbdux0 has been successfully initialized.
usbcore: registered new driver usbdux
but you don't see the lines:
comedi0: usbdux: usb-device 0 is attached to comedi.
comedi0: successfully attached to usbdux.
you probably have a problem with the firmware which should be in /lib/firmware. The firmware files are called "usbdux_firmware.bin", "usbduxfast_firmware.bin" or "usbduxsigma_firmware.bin"

If you are compiling from source, you will find the firmware files in comedilib. Make sure that the firmware is installed in "/lib/firmware" and not in "/usr/local/lib/firmware". Check out the command line options with "./configure --help".

There are simple test programs in the software section which also serve as programming examples. Please check them out. For further information have a look at the README files in the tar balls.

Under UBUNTU or DEBIAN the packages you need to install to use comedi are usually called: libcomedi-dev, libcomedi0 and python-comedilib.

Under UBUNTU there is a group called "iocard". You need to be member of this group to get access to /dev/comedi?. If you install the comedi packages later then you might need to add yourself to this group.

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