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

by Jan Axelson (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review
...a seminal book on the subject. -- PC Magazine

A great job of presenting the difficult topic of USB peripheral development -- enterprise-zone.com

Axelson has done it again. If you want to add USB to your repertoire, this is the book for you. -- Joseph J. Carr, Nuts & Volts, April 2000

The author has a flair for taking complicated information and making it readable, interesting, and informative. -- Test & Measurement World

This is a readable and comprehensive book that covers all aspects of actually building and coding USB devices. Jan's description of building a HID-class peripheral is the best around. -- Jack Ganssle,Embedded Systems Programming, March 2000

Product Description
In USB Complete, Jan Axelson once again reveals the programming secrets for a popular interface. The topic this time is the new Universal Serial Bus (USB), which was designed from the ground up to provide a single, easy-to-use interface for multiple peripherals. But this ease of use has come at the cost of greater complexity for the developers who design USB peripherals and write the program code that communicates with them.

Jan takes the pain out of designing for USB by showing how to write applications that communicate with USB devices using Visual Basic (or any programming language that can call Win32 API functions). There's no need to write low-level device drivers; you can use the drivers included with Windows 98/2000.

Unlike other books that only rehash specifications and manufacturers' marketing materials, this book has original examples, hands-on guidance, and practical tips that developers can put to use right away. USB Complete is an independent guide that isn't obligated to promote one manufacturer's products.

This book will help you decide whether or not USB is the right choice for a peripheral. You'll find tips on selecting the controller chip that matches your design's needs and enables you to get your peripheral up and running quickly. An example project shows how to develop a custom USB peripheral from start to finish, including device firmware and application programming .

As in her previous best-selling Serial Port Complete and Parallel Port Complete, Jan's simple, direct style and attention to detail help make a complex topic understandable.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 398 pages
• Publisher: Lakeview Research; Pap/Cdr edition (December 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0965081931
• ISBN-13: 978-0965081931
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (49 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,455,931 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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)

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)

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

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