Need help with how I am going to make a usb microprocessor work

Question

I have a really big question... It will be pretty straightforward.

First the problem: I attend a class for programming, and my teacher one day brought in a usb cannon bearing a close resemblance to this http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/8a0f/#tabs . He said that if we can make it fire, he will award me .5 bit coins, and I'm still in High school, and a fairly new programmer at that. I only know the basics of C#, and I'm not that far into the total world of programming.

Now what I need:

So far I was wondering how I will make it fire?

I need to know how to access the cannon through USB (What programs to use), how will I program it ( or interact with it. Not sure if I program it to fire, because it already has the firmware in the cannon, but I need to know how to activate it), and I overall need to know how to overcome this challenge, even though I am a newer person.

At first, I looked at this as a way to get a few quick dollars, but now I'm seriously interested. It's a challenge, and it's really fun to try to find out how to do it. However, I don't know where to go from here. I researched to the best of my ability, and tried to understand how chips work, and even how USB's work. I still have yet to find a way to do this though.

Can you help me by providing me the basics of how to program/initiate the codes; tell me what software I will need, how I will communicate with the firmware, and try to make this thing fire?

Answer 1

You can use existing libraries in many languages. For example, many open-source projects are available on these sites :

• C# : https://code.google.com/p/thunder-missile-api/
• Python : http://www.rkblog.rk.edu.pl/w/p/controlling-usb-missile-launchers-python/

Enjoy!