USB to Excel: Write HID report data to Excel in real-time

Excel has built-in tools for getting USB HID data. All you have to do is specify the formula like this for a cell:

=myserver|mytopic!myUSB HIDitem

where:

myserver - USB HID server name;

mytopic - topic name;

myUSB HIDitem - USB HID report items name.

Once the item is updated on the server, it will be automatically updated in Excel.

This method has a few drawbacks:

1. It is rather difficult to create a history of changes for the value of a USB HID item. You will have to write a VBA code for that.
2. Excel will work very slowly in case of a large number of items.

Our program offers an alternative way to generate files that can be opened in Excel, and that will contain the history of value changes.

1. You should add the necessary USB HID report items the way it is described in the "Write USB HID to MSSQL" section (fig. 1-3)

2. Enable writing the received data to a log file of the CSV format (fig. 1). By default, the program generates files in the Excel format. You can customize the format of the CSV file if you click the "Advanced" button.

USB HID

usbdata

Fig. 1 Configuring the log file

Note 1. You should take into account that the "C:\logs" folder must be available for writing. Do not try to write log files to the root folder of the C:\ drive, the "Program Files" folder of the "Windows" folder. Starting from Windows Vista, only the Administrator can write to them.

Note 2. If you use the program as a Windows service, by default, the service will be run by the system account that has restricted permissions to create and write files.

Related articles:

• Write HID report items to a database.
• USB HID to MSSQL (write a lot of HID report items).
• USB HID to MS SQL Server (write several HID report items to separate columns).
• Write HID report values to the MySQL database.
• USB to Excel: Write HID report data to Excel in real-time.