MCC DAQ miniLAB 1008 (USB) under Linux

Most of the MCC DAQ's USB and PCI devices have 3rd party Linux kernel drivers. For details, see: http://www.mccdaq.com/daq-software/Linux-Support.aspx

1. Fetch all stuff from here: ftp://lx10.tx.ncsu.edu/pub/Linux/drivers/USB/
2. Read the README_mcc_usb file CAREFULLY. You have two options:
1. hiddev
1. + Easy, works unprivileged.
2. - May not be present in linux kernel v3.0+, and is not working in 2.4 at all.
3. - SLOW: max 200Hz (which is not enough for a big setup)
4. - No documentation and examples exists.
2. libhid/libusb
1. + Uses libusb, works under all linux kernels
2. + No theoretical ceiling for max throughput.
3. + libusb is portable through Linux, Windows, Mac, etc
4. - Needs to be run as root, or set the executable to suid.
5. - Need USB programming knowledge.
6. - Compiling libhid manually.
3. I assure you, option 2 (libhid+libusb) will be better.
4. Step 0: Deploy dependencies
1. sudo apt-get install libusb-1.0-0 libusb-1.0-0-dev
5. Step 1: Deploy libhid
1. Fetch libhid from http://libhid.alioth.debian.org/
2. tar -xzf libhid*.tar.gz
3. cd libhid*
4. ./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --disable-werror
5. make
6. sudo make install
6. Step 2: Deploy the MCC-specific libhid-based usb library
1. wget ftp://lx10.tx.ncsu.edu/pub/Linux/drivers/USB/60-mcc.rules
2. sudo cp 60-mcc.rules /dev/.udev/rules.d/
3. sudo udevadm control --reload-rules
4. tar xzf MCCLIBHID*.tgz
5. cd libhid (this is another directory!)
6. Edit the Makefile
1. Add " -lm" to the end of the line (after "-o $@") in the libmcchid.so target.
2. Replace all occurence of "/usr/local/" to "/usr/" (there will be 33)
7. make
8. sudo make install
9. run your device's test as root, like "sudo ./test-minilab1008"
1. Good: "miniLAB 1008 Device is found!" and a menu-driven test interface
2. Bad: 
1. "hid_force_open failed" - you're not root
2. Any other error message: well, hack :-)