Customer Reviews

USB Design by Example: A Practical Guide to Building I/O Devices (2nd Edition)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Short review: this book [stinks].

On the surface, this book looks like it is fairly good although it includes a lot of Intel PR about what a good thing USB is. Digging deeper, you will find serious errors, omissions, and examples of poor programming. Files mentioned in the book as being on the CD aren't. Could not find errata at the Intel Press web site. Assembly code just includes all source files in the project. I still haven't figured out how to debug a project like this. Any normal person would set the project up to assemble each file separately. All but one (firmware) project are written in assembly and the one C example doesn't work. The list could go on ...

Before I bought the book, I read these reviews and, generally, they were favorable. Now, I'm simply amazed that anyone would give it any more than 2 stars.

BTW, I think the book and CD are on-line at the Intel Press web site. At a price of $0.00, I'll give it 2 stars.

Bought this book for one of the examples which seemed to be exactly what we needed - the Two Keyboards example. We had a great deal of trouble getting it to work, and we contacted the author directly. He was initially keen to help, telling us he was aware that the CD was generally messed up and versions of files were wrong. He pointed us at an updated online version. We tried this and had even worse problems getting it to build, let alone install. We contacted the author again, and he admitted the online versions were broken too, but he wasn't prepared to help us any further. The least you would ask is that the examples work fairly well and have installation advice either on the CD or in the book. I concur with another reviewer who said that the CD seems to be a mess and full of useless product information. It is hard to see a target audience for whom this book would be useful.

We made this purchase in spite of the poor reviews here, however we implore you to avoid this book: it is unlikely to fulfill your requirements and John Hyde does not deserve your money. It is clearly intended as a money-spinner rather than a useful reference.

This book starts out with a very good overview of the USB system. It then does a reasonable job giving one introductory programming example using the Anchor Chips EZ-USB chip. The rest of the book, however, seems to be a management level overview of all the things USB could/would do. But these are all high level examples with mostly pictures and block diagrams, and have little to no techincal details. Some of these refer to source code on the CD, at best, but there is no desciption of how to actually interface to any of the complicated devices. A detailed example of each of the USB communication methods (simple I/O, bulk port, isochronous port, ...) would have been better. It also needed better descriptions of all intervening OS software that is "magically" used to avoid writing new device drivers. Overall, it is a good overview for anyone that is new to USB, and has lots of high level ideas for a manager designing a new USB product, but very little detail for the software developer trying to develop a USB product.

This book is highly recommended for individuals who wish to actually
engineer a USB device, and then interact with the device on a hardware
or firmware level (keywords: hardware and firmware)....

As a
developer looking to write a device driver for a commercial USB
device, I found this book absolutely worthless....

USB got off to a slow start but now provides device developers with a solid, stable, and pervasive connection strategy. Hyde's USB design by Example explains the technology and fulfills the promise in the title as a "practical guide."

Hyde is careful to stick to the assumptions stated early in the book. "I assume you have some fundamental electronic and programming skills, but I don't expect these to be your major field." Standard diagrams for signals and schematics every hardware engineer would recognize are presented throughout the book with an accompanying crisp and concise explanation for the non-hardware folks. I thought the level of technical explanation was "just right."

Included with the book is a CD ROM with PDF versions of all the relevant specifications, development tools, schematics, and other resources mentioned in the text. Hyde does much more than simply reword or restate these specifications. Instead, he describes chips, boards, and devices commercially available that would help jump-start your USB project.

The book is published by Intel University Press so there is a distinct "WinTel" bent to the work. Macintosh, the first major computer line to support USB, is barely mentioned and no software, examples, or descriptions discuss Apple's platform. Given one of the appeals for USB is its ability to work cross-platform, failure to have LINUX and MacOS examples at the same level as those given to Windows is a significant missed opportunity for the book.

Still, I highly recommend this guide for anyone interested in USB or interested in building devices for this new bus.

John begins with a clear and concise explanation of what you need to know about how USB works. Then he starts teaching by example, including source code and circuits. The buttons and lights example has all of the essentials for reading and writing to USB devices, including Visual-Basic source code and EZ-USB assembly code for the peripheral. Many of the examples use Windows' HID drivers, so you don't need to write or install a device driver. There's also Visual-Basic code for detecting and displaying information about all attached USB devices.

Most USB devices are connected like PC to USBBus to USBDevice to RealWorld. I bought this book thinking it would explain the PC to USBDevice part, but much of this book is about the USBDevice RealWorld part. About the last 50% of the book is a discussion of all the nifty things people are, or will be, connecting via USB (I mean DSL? Cable Modems? Cameras? Sound? BAR CODE READERS??? In a book about designing USB devices?) Unfortunately, I already know how to interface a microcontroller to the real world, so this book wasn't terribly useful to me. In the author's defense, in the 1st half of the book he does present a well written, if not very detailed, introduction to writing USB code, USB Signaling, etc. Had he expanded this section to be the entire book, I think I would have been quite satisfied with the money I spent on it.

I read 3 other books about USB and none of them explained USB better than this book does. This book details a lot of points that others seem to take for granted. If your into hardware and don't want to go into driver design and want to get something going quick this is the book to read. The CD-rom is excellent too, it has a lot of tools and examples that you will need to get started, even sample programs to get you going and templates for your future products. The only downside of the book I feel was the last few chapters, it gets off-topic, more into the consumer products arena and just not technical enough.

However this book is worth every penny and I recommend it to all you hardware engineers out there. Good work John (Author)

I got this book since I thought it would help me with my senior project of connecting an A/D convertor to a PC using USB. It did this and A LOT more. The book explained in a step-by-step fashion exactly what I needed to do and why. Like the previous reviewer I did not appreciate all of the capabilities that USB has to offer and the range of solutions that are possible. But after reading this book in detail I now know that USB can handle real-time data just as easily as static data. I extended my project into a low frequency, digital oscilloscope and this is being used by other students with their audio projects. This project was much easier than building and installing an ISA card in the PC. I will now use USB for all my future projects. Thank you for a most excellent cookbook.

You couldn't follow the examples in the book to get the projects working. If you have experience with USB already, this maybe good to expand your knowledge.