How to map USB HID input to keyboard strokes?

Question

I am a .NET developer, and I want to turn my USB HID device (Mouse, Dance Pad, Guitar or Drums, specially Drums) into a keyboard (with few keys, I know). Do I need to develop this from scratch? Is there any tool that does that? Is there any library that would help me?

Answer 1

Back in 2007 I had to roll an in house component to get the desired functionality in absence of any tools or libraries. This is no black art, still getting a decent .NET integration/experience required some work, plus I mostly facilitated C++/CLI for this component due to the Win32 API interop requirements stemming from going the USB via DirectInput route.

You might be better of today by using one of the following components:

• The .NET Hid Library (GitHub w/ downloads/samples) by Mike O'Brien .
• A USB HID Component for C# (CodeProject) .

I haven't evaluated these yet, but at first sight the one shot article accompanying the latter is not really helpful (with mixed user feedback), while the former appears to be a decent and maintained effort software/project wise and features sample code for different devices. Both might be able to get you going though.