USB Complete: The Developer's Guide (Complete Guides series) Fifth Edition, Fifth edition

This book is remarkably well organized. USB like SCSI and FC-SB3 for mainframes are classes of protocols that are extremely complex. Complexity arises because the protocols are designed to enable a host machine to manage multiplexed communication with a plethora of eclectic slave devices. By contrast, balanced protocols like TCP, X.25, etc. are comparatively straightforward.Despite the complexity of the USB suite of protocols, the author of “USB Complete” 5th Edition has successfully managed to organize the material in such a way that the book has a smooth, easy to follow flow. And generous use of diagrams and tables allows the reader to visualize the structure and flow of the protocols. I find the book to be an excellent supplement to the USB specifications.The only shortcoming of “USB Complete” 5th Edition is the book desperately needs a glossary of terms. As well organized as the book is, there are many cases where a term or acronym appears in the text well before a definition appears in a table or diagram. This has a tendency to derail the otherwise smooth flow of the book.

Great / wide ranging coverage of USB at a number of levels. Like all of Jan's stuff, easy to read and utilize. If you are after a dive into hardware level signaling, it's there and you can use that section by it's self. If you want to start from bits and pieces and finish up with a full blown custom driver, you can do that as well.If you have the need to do a customized USB hardware device, you need this book. You likely also need a bunch of other stuff as well. The same is true if you are going to write a device driver. You need this book. You also need to understand a lot about writing code. If you are doing a commercial product. There is a *lot* more you will need to do to go from scratch ASIC's to "plug and play on every device on the planet" than any one book can cover.My only gripe (and it's a very minor one) is that the Amazon description does not really cover the book as well as it might. The book does cover the in's and outs of getting Windows to co-operate with USB. It is not a book on "using C# and Visual Basic". The book is by no means specifically targeted on those two languages. (ok so pretty picky ...).Is 100% of everything you would ever need to know in this one book? Of course not. You can have a few hundred books on this and related subjects and not cover *everything*. The book goes about as deep as you possibly can without becoming un-usable. It's also here at a pretty reasonable price rather than costing $250 ... (Buy many limited run academic text's lately? They are expensive).

This is a great reference for all things USB, as the title would suggest. It's incredibly dry and at some points very difficult to get through, just because it's so terribly boring. However, it's not the author's fault...it's the subject. There probably aren't a lot of ways to make USB descriptors exciting, or even interesting, really. If you can, push your way through the entire book, you'll have a great understanding of USB. You'll probably forget a ton of details, but at least you'll know where to turn to if you need to recall the details.I used this book for developing a USB 3.0 device on Windows, along with another book: SuperSpeed Device Design By Example, by John Hyde. The design by example book gets your feet wet with hands-on development with real hardware. The USB Complete book gives you the foundation of knowledge to fill in the gaps that are left out of the other book.

Was easy to follow and had the HID device working in no time.

I wish I had just downloaded the USB spec. The book is an abbreviated version but I didn't find the abbreviations very helpful in the end and I am going back to the USB spec. There is not really much extra value added by this author.

The breadth of information and level of detail is fantastic. This is a perfect resource for anyone requiring a detailed understanding of the USB interface. It is particularly useful for device and software developers who want to come up to speed on USB.

I purchased this book on Kindle in order to get a foundational understanding of how USB works, and hopefully a few coding examples. I got exactly what I needed! The book is well organized, complete in its description of the subject matter, and even gave a primer on .NET vs API calls. If you need a quick and complete tutorial, as well as a brief reference guide....this is probably the best book you're going to find. My only unfulfilled wish was that when reading this Kindle book on an iPad, some of the screen capture photos were difficult to read. This may be different if viewed on a Kindle, or on a desktop running Kindle software. I typically purchase my books on Kindle, this one made me wish I'd been patient enough to wait for a hard copy.

This helped us convert some HighSpeed devices to FullSpeed, and clarified questions about bulk endpoints. Also taught me a lot about isochronous and interrupt endpoints. Excellent book!