USB Embedded Hosts: The Developer's Guide

USB devices are ubiquitous today. Many devices from cellphones, game consoles to televisions, and etc. come with some USB port. USB provides an easy and seamless means of communicating with peripheral devices. This book presents a clear and concise explanation of how to use USB in an embedded device. It demystifies the USB specification into something as simple as 1, 2, 3 or A, B, C. This book is ideally suite for anyone building a device and want to include USB. Also, if you are an embedded engineer, this will be your ultimate Holy Grill for USB. I will also recommend getting yourself a copy of USB Complete as well.

It is good at describing how to use USB from within Linux ( 'C' programming & tools ) on embedded systems.If, like me, you are looking for a lower level understanding, then this is not the book for you - no H/W or driver level..... go for his "USB Complete" instead.

Does an excellent job of explaining USB host and how to navigate thru it, with great examples to boot. I would buy more of her books.

Book is OK, although I expected something what would enable me to write my own USB embedded host using a decent microcontroller. Instead of that I got to know something about embedded Linux (but not very much).

What I expected from the book: how to communicate with devices on the USB bus via the USB functionality of the kernel; layout of USB packets, USB configurations, interfaces, etc. E.g., the book promises to explain how to access files on USB drives. I was expecting an explanation and sample code to read or write a file on a UMASS device with an arbitrary file-system (e.g., FATx) via low-level USB transactions.What the book provides: random isolated references and details to tiny, out of large picture, parts of the USB protocol (very small portion of the material) and then a description of how to communicate with USB periferals via standard application API-s. E.g., how do you write a file on a USB device? Surprise, surprise: fopen(), fwrite(), fclose(). Not what I paid N bucks for a book about USB embedded hosts.Oh, and the book tries to explain data frame formats via plain prose, like "bmRequestType is a bit field [...]; Bit 7 names the direction of data flow for data in the Data stage...." There is no table indicating the layout of the packet.There is one chapter though that is relevant: chapter 10 includes some sample code about using libusb.If you are new to linux and embedded and don't mind reading a random mixture of application-level API-s about how to communicate with devices (that may or may not be connected via a USB bus) then you might have better luck with the book.Bad news for me is that there appears to be no book that would provide what I expected.

While probably an excellent source for anyone building an embedded Linux host, everyone else need not apply. Some slight mention is given to CPU manufacturers supplied libraries, but nothing for anyone hoping to start from scratch.

all ok

To be prepared is half the victory. Preparation is essential for everyone of us, experienced or fresher. If you are planning to develop low level USB applications for embedded systems this book is an excellent preparatory guide.USB interconnect is successful as it is adapted in various end products. This book covers how to program most of these use cases with programmers in mind detailing from how to code to how to setup.If you are an embedded developer who is planning to work on Linux USB, this is the book that teaches you how to interact with the low level USB drivers.