USB Complete: Everything You Need to Develop Custom USB Peripherals (Paperback)

by Jan Axelson (Author) "Computer hardware doesn't often get a chance to start fresh..." (more)
Key Phrases: report descriptor, host enumerates, four transfer types, Visual Basic, Device Manager, Usage Page (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"EEs . . . interested in a clearer, more concise presentation might do better to obtain a copy of USB Complete, Second Edition." -- EDN magazine

"If you want to add the Universal Serial Bus to your repertoire, then this is the book for you." -- Nuts & Volts

An excellent and highly recommended "how to" guide and reference. -- Midwest Book Review

Covers all aspects of building and coding USB devices. Jan's description of building a HID-class peripheral is the best around. -- Embedded Systems Programming, March 2000

I tell all my students that they really need this book in their library. -- Paul E. Berg, instructor, Annabooks USB Developers Workshop

Many books are full of things that are easy to find out. Jan has obviously slogged at the difficult stuff. -- Dave Wright, Cypress Semiconductor

The author has a flair for making complicated information readable, interesting, and informative. The best book on the topic. -- Test & Measurement World, June 2000

Product Description
Who should read this book?

This book is for you if you want to know how to design and program a peripheral with a Universal Serial Bus (USB) interface, or if you want to know how to communicate with USB peripherals from the applications you write. These are some of questions the book answers:

What is USB and how do peripherals use it to communicate with PCs? There’s a lot to the USB interface, and understanding how USB works is essential in creating hardware and program code that works efficiently and reliably. This book’s focus is on the practical knowledge you’ll need in selecting components and writing device firmware to communicate over the bus.

How can I decide if my project should use a USB interface? Maybe your design isn’t suited for USB. I’ll show you how to decide whether it is. If the answer is yes, I’ll help you decide which of USB’s three speeds and four transfer types to use.

How do I choose a USB controller chip for my peripheral design? Every USB peripheral must contain an intelligent controller. There are dozens of controller chips designed for use in USB peripherals. In this book, I compare popular chip families and offer tips on how to decide, based on both your project’s needs and your own background and preferences. As with any embedded-system project, developing a USB device also requires a development system for loading and debugging code, and I cover the options here as well.

How do applications communicate with USB peripherals? To communicate with a USB peripheral, a PC needs two things: a device driver that knows how to communicate with the PC’s USB drivers and an application that knows how to talk to the device driver. Some peripherals can use drivers included with Windows. Others may require a custom driver. This book will show you when you can use Windows’ built-in drivers and how to communicate with devices from Visual Basic and Visual C++ applications. You’ll also find out what’s involved in writing a device driver and what tools can help to speed up the process.

How do USB peripherals communicate? USB peripherals typically use a combination of hardware and embedded code to communicate with PCs. In this book, I show how to write the device firmware that enables Windows to identify a device and load the appropriate device driver. I also include example firmware for exchanging data with a PC.

How do I decide whether my peripheral can use bus power, or whether it needs its own supply? A big advantage to USB is that many peripherals can be powered entirely from the bus. Find out whether your device can use this capability and how to manage power use, especially for devices that use battery power.

How can I be sure that my device will operate as smoothly as possible for its end users? On the peripheral side, smooth operation requires understanding the specification’s requirements and how the device can meet them. In the PC, proper operation requires a correctly structured information (INF) file that enables Windows to identify the device and software that knows how to communicate with the device as efficiently as possible. This book has information and examples to help with each of these.

What’s new in the Second Edition?

In the months after the publication of the first edition of USB Complete, much happened in the world of USB, including the release of version 2.0 of the USB specification. USB 2.0 supports a bus rate of 480 Megabits per second, forty times faster than USB 1.1. This and other developments in hardware and software prompted this second edition of the book.

Rather than just tacking on a chapter about USB 2.0, I’ve revised the book from start to finish to reflect the changes in 2.0. By popular request, another addition is Visual C++ code to accompany the Visual Basic examples for application communications with USB devices. I’ve also expanded the material about Windows drivers and applications to include Windows 2000, and have added information on new controller chips and development tools. Other additions and updates are sprinkled throughout, many prompted by reader suggestions.

Jan Axelson

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Product Details

• Paperback: 450 pages
• Publisher: Lakeview Research; 2nd edition (September 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0965081958
• ISBN-13: 978-0965081955
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (49 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #103,064 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A rare combination: easy to read, complete, and accurate, June 30, 2000

By	Lane Hauck (San Diego, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Usb Complete: Everything You Need to Develop Custom Usb Peripherals (Paperback)

I teach a USB class, so I've had occasion to review every book on the subject. I've chosen Jan's book for my class text because it is, by a wide margin, the best single book on the Universal Serial Bus I've seen. Jan has the unique talent of talking directly to the user in a very friendly, clear, and easy to read style, while losing absolutely nothing in scope or detail. The chapter on how to coerce Visual Basic into making the Windows API calls necessary to support the USB HID class got me over major hurdles while preparing lecture materials. Instead of the usual kitchen sink approach, Jan zeros in on exactly what you need to know to do the job and covers it completely. And her examples actually work!

If you're looking for a book that spans basic USB principles to advanced topics, all clearly explained, you can't go wrong with this book.

106 of 120 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Indirect & Realiant on 3rd party products., February 4, 2001

By	David Hunter "Akito" (Oregon) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Usb Complete: Everything You Need to Develop Custom Usb Peripherals (Paperback)

I purchased this book with the intention of learning how to communicate with USB peripherals from the PC perspective. What I later found after reading this book is that the author is heavily reliant upon 3rd party products to do the work, which simply means you'll need to pay more money for evaluation modules, and more software rather than being able to make the end product yourself. For someone who is at the hobbiest level, this book would be great perhapse, but the ultimate problem is it lets others do the work which IMO defeats the purpose of a book. If I am going to use 3rd party tools, I'll read their documentation-- not pay for a book to tell me what else I need to use.

On another note, this book is an EXCELLENT reference book when you need a little refresher about other things, but you can also find this info online

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent for hardware, firmware, and software developers, June 11, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Usb Complete: Everything You Need to Develop Custom Usb Peripherals (Paperback)

With the help of this book, I went from knowing virtually nothing about USB to having a device programmed and communicating with a PC. The book covers everything from what's important to know in the USB specification, to selecting a controller chip for a device, to writing the device firmware and application programs to communicate with the device. About the only area not covered is how to write a Windows device driver (this is probably a book-length topic in itself), but Jan explains why this is often not necessary and describes tools that make the job easier when needed. Highly recommended