Customer Reviews

USB Complete: Everything You Need to Develop Custom USB Peripherals

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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.

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

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

The author does a great job reviewing the details of USB. However, if your intentions are like mine to design some hardware and transfer data from the device to the PC, I think your pretty much out of luck.

I understand this is a very hard subject but the author does not include sample drivers that allow you to communicate with a generic part, let alone, helping you develop a driver for your application.

I think this book is only good to get a sense only for what USB is and how it works. Unfortunately, blocks diagrams do not solve anyones problem, and knowledge-hungry individuals such as myself find these books rather useless. Buy the book only if you have no clue what USB is, else do not waste your money.

When it comes to developing USB hardware, there aren't many off-the-shelf-how-to books. This is the only one I am aware of. As a result, it wins by default.

Axelson starts by covering the pros and cons of USB, and would be perfect for explaining to a non-technical manager. It covers the USB protocol, and even covers the Cypress USB development kit, which can be used to develop a USB peripheral.

Simply stated, this book won't make you a USB genius, but if you are charged with developing a USB device from scratch, it can compress the time required to ramp up. It can save you hours of frustration.

Unfortunately, reading this book won't make host (PC) programmers into USB geniuses, but it does explain USB reasonably well.

My use of the book was primarily as a second opinion, against which I could check my interpretations of the USBv2.0 specification. In a few instances, this was very useful (i.e., clarifying exactly what is meant by the terms transaction, packet, handshake, etc.).

The chapters on the computer software side of USB development serve as a decent introduction to how the Windows OS will interact with your device, but is written at the introductory level. If you already have some experience with Windows programming and still have questions that you want answered, you will likely find these chapters too basic. Also, if you are interested in interfacing with another OS, look elsewhere.

All in all, this book serves as a good companion to the USB spec sheets if you are confused about a particular issue, but nothing beats reading the actual spec for yourself.

I was really wanting something that would show a step by step guide to building a USB device (even if all it did was turn on and off an LED) but this book doesn't really show how to actually BUILD anything. It's more about the principles/standars for USB from both the hardware and software side, and some examples on how to connect to and use an HID USB device.

This book got me up and running with my PIC 18F4550-based PICDEM FS USB board very quickly. Microchip includes code for this device, but USB Complete helped me make a little more sense of it all. I think some more diagrams would help clarify the USB protocol more. For a beginning USB developer, everything you really need to know is covered in this book.

Jan has really done an impressive job on explaining USB and how to create applications for it. This is by far the best USB resource that you can get - included with the book is a CD-ROM with Visual C++, Visual Basic and example Tools that you can work with to develop your own USB applications.

I used information from Axelson's ealier edtion in a project that employed a USB magstripe reader in a Windows application that demanded no operator intervention. This is quite tricky, because HID devices often require that focus be set to a text or edit window -- and this was not possible in my system. The Windows HID interface API data thar Jan provided were vital.

This edition adds new information for application programming use the Microsoft Visual Studio (.NET) programming environment, and also details on USB OTG (ON THE GO) which is designed to allow USB communication between "client" devices -- capability that is missing from non-OTG enabled devices.

Anyone with a serious interest in USB needs to have this book on their shelf; they also need to do what I plan to do, that is to take it down and to review it from time to time.

The following is what I wrote for USB Complete, 1st Edition, and it still applies. >>>

I was sceptical. I no longer am. This book shows you how to get started implementing USB in Windows based programs. Visual Basic may be used on the PC side, and Jan shows examples that do just this. While USB design is usually thought to require C/C++ programming, this isn't necessarily true. Of course, actual design and/or performance requirements may dictate that VB not be used, still it may be a viable way to implement specific USB designs. Jan also shows that USB design involves the firmware that is implemented in the USB hardware itself. She covers these details well.