Software Overview

From Phidgets Support

Phidgets’ philosophy is that you do not have to be an electrical engineer in order to do projects that use devices like sensors, motors, motor controllers, and interface boards. All you need to know is how to program.

We have developed a complete set of Application Programming Interfaces (API) that are supported for many different operating systems, and which can be used through many different programming languages.

We suggest starting with the Getting Started guide for your device. This will help you run a basic example to check your hardware and drivers.

The next step would be to choose your operating system below, and from there choose a language, learn about how to write code for your Phidget, and get API references for your programming language.

The APIs are covered in more detail in the API common to all devices and the API that pertains to your specific device.

Operating System Support

These operating system pages provide drivers for using Phidgets. They help you set up your system after following the Getting Started guide for your device. The operating systems links below are also on every Getting Started guide, so if you have not yet read the one for your device, head straight there.

Phidgets can be run either directly through USB or remotely over a network via the Phidget Webservice. Most operating systems below can run Phidgets directly, but a few can only control them over a network.

Phidgets can run either directly or over a network on these operating systems:

Phidgets can only be used over a network by these operating systems:

Language Support

We provide a variety of supported languages for using Phidgets. Each language has its own libraries, which may be found on the language pages below, along with code examples and an in-depth API.

Many languages also depend on the core drivers being installed as well. These drivers can be found on the operating system pages above.

Phidgets can be controlled using our high level API which allows for either an event driven style of code design, or by traditional logic code. If you are flexible on what language you can use, we suggest choosing a language which supports event-driven code.

For those languages which only have examples for Some Devices, please see the language page for which specific devices have examples.

Phidgets have libraries to support both event-driven and logic code in the following languages:

Language API Code Samples Events Logic Code Use via Direct USB Phidget Webservice Native Library Phidget User Base
C# All Devices All Devices ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Extensive
C/C++ All Devices All Devices
Java All Devices All Devices
Python All Devices All Devices
Adobe Director All Devices InterfaceKit Only
Applescript All Devices All Devices
AutoIt All Devices None
C# (.NET Compact) All Devices Some Devices
Cocoa All Devices All Devices
Delphi All Devices Some Devices
Flash AS3 All Devices All Devices
Flex AS3 All Devices All Devices
iOS All Devices InterfaceKit Only
LabVIEW All Devices All Devices
LiveCode InterfaceKit Only InterfaceKit Only
Max/MSP All Devices All Devices
REALBasic All Devices None
Ruby All Devices All Devices
Simulink All Devices InterfaceKit Only
Visual Basic .NET All Devices All Devices
Visual Basic 6.0 All Devices All Devices
Visual Basic for Apps All Devices Some Devices
Visual Basic Script All Devices Some Devices


You can only use event-driven code in these languages, by their design:

Language API Code Samples
Android Java All Devices InterfaceKit Only


Phidget libraries support only logic code in the following languages, by their design:

Language API Code Samples
MATLAB All Devices Some Devices
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