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Summary: Author's Choice of AchorChips USB Controller is Excellent!
Review: Although I have not read this book, I feel the following comments may help prospective purchasers:I have recently implemented 2 USB peripherals (telecommunications) based on the AnchorChips controller the author references in his introduction. I also used VC++ 6.0 and W98 DDK to develop device drivers. I started with the development/evaluation kit the author refers to for the rapid prototyping of my products. I found the AnchorChips development kit to be one of the best executed packages I have encountered in my 10+ years in EE. It gives me faith that the author is offering a good product.
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Summary: CD examples are broken
Review: 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.
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Summary: WOW - USB IS AMAZING!
Review: 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.
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Summary: Excellent if your new to USB
Review: 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)
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Summary: A good introduction to developing USB peripherals
Review: 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.
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Summary: An excellent introduction to developing USB peripherals
Review: John says it's easy. I say that learning about USB can make your head spin. It's not a simple interface to understand. But John's book will help. He 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 98's 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. The CD-ROM has tons of useful code. This is a good book!
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Summary: This book is NOT what you think it is...
Review: 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.
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Summary: Connecting IO Devices to a Modern PC IS EASY
Review: One of the major things that I have learnt during my 21 years at Intel is to provide working examples for people to build from. I have always been responsible, in some way, for delivering technical "how-to" documentation or technical product training and Intel's recent "Intel University Press" program gave me the opportunity to return to my favorite product line of microcontrollers. The excitement around USB and the scarcity of practical design information for a system solution produced the momentum for this book. Throughout the project I was convinced that adding low- to medium-speed IO devices to a PC Host ought to be easy. I was fortunate to have a wealth of experts that I could talk to and each knew a piece of the puzzle. After distilling their inputs and the mass of USB literature from Intel, Microsoft and many USB component vendors, I did discover a simple path to success and I have carefully documented this in my book. My choice of a HID (Human Interface Device) approach may appear over-complicated as a first impression but it does produce the simplest solution in the long run since all of the required software drivers are already built into the operating system (yes, they are well hidden, but they are there!). Only application level software need be written for the PC Host (no complicated drivers, DLL's or other magic) and I chose Visual Basic since this made the example programs short and easy to understand. Almost any of the available USB peripheral microcontrollers could be used for the IO device implementation - a typical HID does not stress the capabilities of a modern microcontroller. For most of the examples I chose the AnchorChips EZ-USB device because of it's soft-load capability and it's abundant USB resources. The source code is provided on the companion CDROM and may be ported to another microcontroller if required. I am most interested in your feedback on the book and it's examples. I am planning another USB book and would prefer to solve real design problems - let me know what your's is and I may include the solution in my next book! I hope that you enjoy this book and that it makes you more productive. John Hyde
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Summary: Disappointing
Review: 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.
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Summary: A pure waste of time
Review: This book is can only be used as an USB overview for a manager, if that. Most of the chapthers has less than 30% of stuff that's related to USB. Just look at the way his explains HID and Report descriptor, you can tell he know less than do about them. The example descriptor he gives are directly copied from USB 1.1 Spec. What a lamer. The auther gives out code that he never explains, making me wonder if it's indeed his code. In all, I feel all he did is assembled some materals he found on the internet and stuffed them in a book. BTW, he's Visual Basic skill sucks.
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