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How to buy a mini Pro - USB 2.0 Hearing Aid Programmer [DIY]

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Edited

How to buy a mini Pro keeps changing/evolving. You can try aliexpress.com105 searching for “mini pro hearing”, or you can try EBay. The online seller deals seem to have dried up.

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I spoke to Luke at Buyhear on Oct 13 and he said the price is the price…$225. I told him about the other quotes of $250 and $300 and he figured that was shipping in the price and that maybe those quotes were for international inquiries. He claimed that $175 was barely his cost so how could he remain in business selling at that. But I guess for existing customers where he’s perhaps made a pile of money he can sell at that number. So those that got in early with Buyhear got the deal. No more.
I first had a quote for shipping to Canada that had a separate line for shipping that showed $40. So hmm…

Anyway…let’s see if Audiometrix ever gets stock and then they’ll be the clear unambiguous winner. It’s all too late for me anyway but this would be good for future readers.

I would think something that factored into Buyhears original pricing is that selling a MiniPro eliminated a lot of hassle because they no longer had to send the person a programmer if they needed an adjustment. Selling it at cost makes sense if it saves them hassle

@pvc said:

Also…

35549796250_f44077b321_b.jpg1024x488 90.8 KB

Although the picture on the right is NOT a mini Pro, it’s the picture of a Hi Pro, right? And the Hi Pro works just as well as the mini Pro, although more expensive because it’s the original programmer, is that correct?

It’s a Chinese counterfeit Hi Pro. See that black bar on the right? That likely covers up a name which recently has been the reason for Internet sales take-downs due to trademark infringement.

I’ve read in your other thread that the Hi-Pro is very expensive and you can’t buy it anyway, only the pros can. Do you know what the difference is between the two? Especially what the Hi-Pro can do that the mini-Pro can’t?

Edited

Does anybody have a Windows 10 driver for the MiniPro USB 2.0 device sold by Ali Express? They shipped mine with a CD of old Windows drivers but not Win 10, and unlike with a lot of device hardware, Windows 10 will not recognize the old drivers as valid for this device. When I asked for a link to download a Win 10 driver for it, they said there was no link; they could only ship it on a disc, and it would cost $25 from China to the US, which is ridiculous for a device this price and for a driver that should have been included all along.

Do the miniPro and HiPro use the same drivers? This looks unlikely as the underlying hardware is different.

If the same, I or someone like @pvc can try to share but the miniPro files may be very large and may require some additional time.

It might be wise to set up a cloud account to share the necessary software.

In reply to @hamjor1

@hamjor1 said:

Does anybody have a Windows 10 driver for the MiniPro USB 2.0 device sold by Ali Express? They shipped mine with a CD of old Windows drivers but not Win 10, and unlike with a lot of device hardware, Windows 10 will not recognize the old drivers as valid for this device. When I asked for a link to download a Win 10 driver for it, they said there was no link; they could only ship it on a disc, and it would cost $25 from China to the US, which is ridiculous for a device this price and for a driver that should have been included all along.

The MiniPro I bought works out of the box on my Windows 10 PC without a disk. Is that because it’s a USB 3.0 compatible device while the one you’re trying to buy here is an older USB 2.0 version only?

Edited

Thanks for the quick replies. Now I’m nervous that I have a defective MiniPro since others haven’t needed a special driver. I’ve tried it on two different Win 10 PCs. I can roll an old laptop back to Win 7 and try to use the disk they supplied with a Windows 7 driver, but that would take hours and as could happen if I send the Ali Express people another $25, still might not work.

Here’s what I do and see when I do it. Reboot the up-to-date Win 10 1703 PC. Look in Control Panel > Device Manager > Universal Serial Bus controllers. No yellow triangles visible.

Attach the MiniPro USB 2.0 device to any USB 2.0 port on this PC. The green POWER LED on the MiniPro illuminates, but not the PC LED. In that same section of Device Manager above, a new entry appears with a yellow exclamation-point triangle for “Unknown USB Device (Device Descriptor Request Failed).” Right-click that and choose Properties and it indicates the device is not configured. Try any of the various options there for loading or updating the driver, and they all fail. For example, it will say, “Windows has determined that the best driver for this device is already installed. There may be better drivers on Windows Update or on the device manufacturer’s website,” but if I click Update Driver, it goes to Windows Update, and checking for updates doesn’t find any. Then if I unplug the MiniPro, the yellow-triangle line goes away.

Oh and in response to z10, no other yellow triangles including under COM Ports.

@hamjor1 said:

Attach the MiniPro USB 2.0 device to any USB 2.0 port on this PC. The green POWER LED on the MiniPro illuminates, but not the PC LED. In that same section of Device Manager above, a new entry appears with a yellow exclamation-point triangle for “Unknown USB Device (Device Descriptor Request Failed).” Right-click that and choose Properties and it indicates the device is not configured. Try any of the various options there for loading or updating the driver, and they all fail. For example, it will say, “Windows has determined that the best driver for this device is already installed. There may be better drivers on Windows Update or on the device manufacturer’s website,” but if you click Update Driver, it goes to Windows Update, and checking for updates doesn’t find any. Then if I unplug the MiniPro, the yellow-triangle line goes away.

My MiniPro doesn’t show up in the USB Controllers group at all. It shows up in the Ports (COM & LPT) group as a HI-PRO (COM1) device instead.

I just checked Removing the device from Windows and then plugging it in again. No changes appear in Device Manager under Ports (COM & LPT); no yellow triangles in Control Panel other than the one that appears in USB controllers. It may not appear in COM ports because my Win 10 CP has never recognized this as a validly installed device.

Hm, did you try to uninstall it from the Device Manager and reinstall it? I remember the very first time I plugged it in, there’s a message popping up on the lower right hand corner saying that it found a new device and that it was trying to configure this new device, then it said that the device was configured successfully and ready to use after that.

Did you see that message the first time you plugged in? Did it say that it was able to configure it properly? Uninstalling the device should restart this process again.

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