developing a USB device using microcontroller walkthrough

[m_gray]

Hello people,

I am currently developing a USB "walk through" eBook, that will enable
everybody with electrical knowledge to develop devices themselves,
leaving up to them only the application design / role.

Of course, the standard HID / mass storage etc.. will be unfolded.

What I need to know as a term of market perspective is if you people will be
interested and are willing to pay the price of a regular engineering book
to have an easy description of the "hard" parts:

- Isochronous transfers applied to audio, video, and in a general
device(eg to use with "other" device type)
- Physical devices extension of HID devices (Joystick, actuator control...)

In opposition to other books, we plan on keeping our examples up to date
via a website, so it will be more than just a book.

The book will lead you through all the practical steps, sticking to
the essence.
We also intend to make some walk-through video's showing step by step how
to accomplish your USB goals.

The first step will be to get the device to "work", which occasionally can be
hard enough.
But every example will also be fitted with information on what to modify where,
in order to push the USB standards to its limits.

We will supply development boards, but will guide the user in creating its
own, or even in using a generic one.

Any remark will be helpful,


Best regards and thank you if you dropped a comment
For any precise and on the edge of the question request, don't hesitate to PM me, I will answer all constructive remarks and requests

Paul

 

[kender]

Re: developing a USB device using microcontroller walkthroug

What I need to know as a term of market perspective is if you people will be interested and are willing to pay the price of a regular engineering book to have an easy description of the "hard" parts.

1st - people will look for app notes from their silicon manufacturers and for code examples from compiler providers.
2nd - people will looks if FTDI had made a chip which makes the hard things easy.
3rd - people will look if anyone had uploaded your eBook to EDAboard or rapidshare.

 

[m_gray]

Re: developing a USB device using microcontroller walkthroug

Thank you Kender,

1-I plan on guiding people through manufacturer documentation, so they can get to the interesting part Really quick. I am not going to rewrite this.

2- FTDI is very limited in terms of USB devices. It has USB hosts that can be useful to skip the computer part, but this is not the area I am looking at. And my objective is to make your company drop completely the becoming-obsolete UART/TTL communication. It is easy to put in place, but customers when they plug in their USB device do not want to: Install a driver (even just choosing an .inf ), Be lost during device enumeration

3- Thank you for your (il)legal concerns, but the book is also to increase the company's visibility.

 

[microKernel]

Re: developing a USB device using microcontroller walkthroug

I think this would have value for professionals but it would be a very big book to cover a lot of good things. Since you want to do it mainly for marketing so I think you'll limit it to the solution that your company will provide (decreasing the usefullness as every other company says we have the best-in-class solution and no one is right )

So from a marketing perspective instead of a walk through for a USB device, a set of small ebooks like
'walk through for USB mouse'
'walk through for USB CDrom'
'Walk through for USB speakers'
'walkt through for USB cam'

etc. will be more valuable. They'll quickly become useless if the corresponding software part isn't included.

Regarding the 3rd point: I believe good books gets sold even if it is available somewhere. Who can spend time looking for that and then printing? IMHO Ebooks are good for searching but not for serious reading and working based upon the stuff in them. One would buy a book if it is not filled with marketing crap, and I need to read that not just judge.

 

[m_gray]

Re: developing a USB device using microcontroller walkthroug

Hello,

Thank you microKernell. We are indeed moving into this direction. We plan on releasing a free part too, so I will keep you in touch.

On your first point, the content of the book should be stand - alone in my point of view. Engineers need to have THEIR solution hardware / software. So the main point is to make them gain time on developing their solution, and if they want something pre-made, we will be here to supply them just what they need.

Cheers