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I'd like to know what are the different ways for a browser to interact with external hardware. Something important : I have control over the machine. That means I can install addons( firefox, chrome ), and run exes on the machine.

I already have a JAVA program that can communicate with the hardware, and I'd like to know how to expose the interface to the browser. So that's one possibility I'm investigating but I'd like to know if there is any other way I can do it.

Thank you

Gilbert
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I had a similar problem. The only ways presented were to either use an addon, or write use a tiny C server that uses HTML as it's GUI.

I know you are using Java, and this thread is C++ related, but the basic principles should still work: link here.

Community
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Bojangles
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You can expose a COM interface from your java application and use silverlight to talk to it. This is significantly simpler if the desktop application is in .NET. Check out: http://www.wintellect.com/CS/blogs/jprosise/archive/2009/12/14/silverlight-4-s-new-com-automation-support.aspx

basarat
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HTML5 will have a device element that will allow you to connect external devices. Right now, the only choice you have is using plugins to communicate to external hardware.

You can search about NPAPI (a new api called PPAPI is in the making) that will allow you to create a plugin that communicates to native code to do whatever you want.

Mohamed Mansour
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